October 26, 2025 • 18 mins
Sermon preached by Dr. B.J. Hutto at Hendricks Avenue Baptist Church on Sunday, October 26, 2025.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:06):
Fred Craddock used to tell the story of when he was
invited to guest preach atanother church one Sunday and
was assigned to preach Jesus'parable of the prodigal son.
Craddock says that he decided tojust preach the story straight,
to focus on the end where theloving father is pleading with
(00:31):
the dutiful older brother who isstanding out in the darkness,
refusing to come into the house,because he refuses to celebrate
the return of his youngerprodigal sibling.
Craddock says that he closed hissermon talking about how God the
Father always stands ready toshow grace to all his children.
(00:54):
And then after the sermon,Craddock said, a man in the
church approached him lookinggrumpy.
I don't know whether I shouldsay that I didn't like your
sermon or I didn't like thetext, the man said.
(01:14):
Craddock asked him to say alittle bit more.
The end, he said, about the boy,the younger one.
He should have been disowned byhis father, shunned by his
family, shamed, thrown intojail, if at all possible.
That is what he deserved.
(01:36):
Not a party.
The following Sunday, Craddocksays he got pressed into
teaching a Sunday school classat his own church because a
teacher called in sick.
Oh, it'll be easy, he was told.
It's just Jesus' parable of theprodigal son.
(01:58):
So Craddock, not wanting to bescolded two weeks in a row.
Preachers never like to getscolded two weeks in a row.
Craddock decided that he wasgoing to get it right this time.
There was a man who had twosons.
He began the class with a wrysmile.
(02:20):
The older son stayed home, didhis father's bidding, worked
hard on the farm.
The younger son took his money,wasted it in a far country, came
into hard times.
He decided that he should gohome, confess his wrongdoing.
Well, when the younger son drewnear the house, he heard music
(02:43):
and dancing, and he called oneof his father's servants and
said, What is this party that'sgoing on?
To which the servant replied,Well, you know your older
brother who stayed home, workedhard, listened to his parents.
Your father appreciates him.
(03:04):
And so he's throwing him aparty.
As soon as he finished tellingthe story, Craddock says that a
woman in the front row of theclass leaned over to her husband
and said, That's how it wassupposed to go.
Today, Jesus tells anotherparable that focuses on two men.
(03:29):
One, a Pharisee, and a genuinelygood man.
He's scrupulous.
He fasts twice a week, wellabove what would have been
required.
He's generous.
He donates 10% of all of hisincome, no matter what.
(03:51):
He is a genuinely good man, andif you don't believe it, then
just ask him.
God, I thank you that I am notlike other people, he says.
Thieves, rogues, adulterers, oreven like this, tax collector.
(04:17):
The second man in the store isthe tax collector.
Which doesn't mean that he is anagent of the IRS.
It means that he is a turncoat,a sellout, a toady for the
Romans, whom all of hiscountrymen hated.
And he is genuinely a bad man.
(04:42):
And if you don't believe it,then just ask him.
This man, Jesus says, stood at adistance with his head low,
beating his breast and praying,God be merciful upon me, a
sinner.
(05:03):
And it is this tax collector,Jesus tells his disciples, who
walks away justified, not thePharisee.
I suspect that if, like Craddockdid with the story of the
prodigal son, I rewrote the endof the parable to say that the
(05:24):
good guy Pharisee walked awayjustified instead of the bad
guy, tax collector, more thanone of us would turn to our
neighbor and say, That's the wayit's supposed to be.
The Pharisee is upright.
He is upstanding.
(05:45):
He is scrupulous.
Just like the older brother ofthe prodigal who stayed home,
worked hard, kept his noseclean.
And yet neither is the focus oftheir two stories.
The older brother ends his storyoutside in the darkness,
(06:07):
listening to the party going oninside his father's house,
seething at the grace that isbeing shown his degenerate
younger sibling.
The Pharisee ends his story bywalking out of the temple, head
held high, undoubtedly respectedby his neighbors and aware of
(06:28):
it.
But as we are told, failing tohave justified himself in the
eyes of God, and undoubtedlyunaware of that fact as well.
Both are good men.
But they are both focused on howrighteous they are and on how
(06:52):
unrighteous they're convincedtheir neighbors are, and that,
my friends, is precisely wherethey have lost the plot.
Now I am sure that you will besurprised to hear it.
But even today, there are somePharisaic older brothers walking
(07:17):
around us.
You would think that over twothousand years the church would
have already been able toovercome this kind of
temptation.
You would think that by now wewould have taken to heart what
all Jesus said about this kindof thing.
(07:40):
These two parables in Luke, forexample.
Or his words to Nicodemus inJohn 3 about how God did not
send his son into the world tocondemn the world.
Or his line in Matthew's gospelabout not focusing on the speck
of sawdust that is in yourneighbor's eye, but instead
(08:04):
working on dislodging the two byfour that is sticking out of
yours.
But no.
There is something in us.
There is something in ourneighbors that would much rather
point a finger and judge thosearound us than point a thumb and
(08:29):
take a hard look at ourselves.
But that's not how God calls usto act.
That's not how God acts.
That's certainly not how Jesusacts.
(08:50):
Jesus always a friend ofsinners.
Jesus always seeking out theleast and the lost.
Jesus, known to the good,upstanding, religious people of
his day as a drunkard and aglutton because of the company
that he kept.
(09:13):
That's Jesus.
In our Old Testament lessontoday from Isaiah 42, a passage
that the church has held foreverpoints forward through time and
foretells the coming of ourLord.
We are told about how gentle Heis.
(09:37):
A bruised reed, Isaiah says, Hewill not break.
A dimly burning wick he will notextinguish.
That's Jesus.
(09:57):
If Jesus ever points a finger atsomeone and calls them out, it
is almost universally thePharisees of his world that he's
talking about.
The righteous who border onself-righteous.
The religious people, theupstanding, the older brothers
and sisters of the world whoknow just how admirable they
(10:20):
are.
Not the ones who are bent low.
Not the tax collectors.
It's not the humbled that hepoints out.
The people who get kickedaround, he's much too gentle for
that.
(10:40):
Like Isaiah says.
(12:03):
And yet, just last week, righthere in Jacksonville, there was
a perfect encapsulation of thesame kind of attitude that Jesus
is preaching against.
A sister congregation of ours,Riverside Baptist Church, now
(12:29):
known as Riverside Church atPark and King, woke up last
Monday morning to find theirpride flag ripped down, covered
in blood-red paint, and stakedto the ground with a cross.
(12:54):
Now, I feel very confident whenI say that whoever did that left
that church feeling justified intheir own eyes.
Confident of their ownrighteousness.
(13:18):
Thank God I am not like thesepeople.
And I feel sure that they leftconvinced that they had just
done something to further God'skingdom here on earth.
(13:38):
And yet I'll tell you this.
I have people right in my ownfamily, from fifteen to fifty,
who love Jesus.
But who, because of things likethis, will not darken the doors
(14:01):
of church.
Because from what they hearabout on the news, they are
convinced that church is moreabout that kind of hatred and
that kind of self-righteousnessthan it is about the
overwhelming grace of God.
(14:28):
And I suspect that some of youhere might have people in your
lives who assume that samething.
So yeah.
It has been two thousand yearssince Jesus taught this parable
(14:48):
about the tax collector and thePharisee, and that other one
about the prodigal son and hisjudgy older brother, and he said
that thing about the sawdust andthe two by four in your eye, and
he told Nicodemus about how Godso loved the world, and he said
it again and again and again andagain.
(15:12):
Twenty centuries.
Amen.
(15:38):
So there's a story that I liketo tell whenever I preach this
text that just did not fittoday.
A children's Sunday schoolteacher was teaching the story
of the parable of the Phariseeand the tax collector, where the
Pharisee says, Thank God I amnot like this tax collector.
And when she finishes, theteacher says, Now, children, let
(16:01):
us bow our heads and pray andthank God that we are not like
this Pharisee.
And then the preacher stands inthe pulpit and says,
Congregation, let us all thankGod that we are not as dense as
this Sunday school teacher.
That's not how it works.
(16:23):
But it's easy to point a finger.
It is so much harder to point athumb.
And yet that, my friends, is theway of discipleship.
Not pointing a finger, buthaving the courage and the hope
(16:46):
to point the thumb.
And it's hard.
But if you're here today and youhave that courage, and you have
that hope, and that faith inGod's overwhelming grace, not
(17:11):
just to forgive your neighborwhom you might judge, but to
even forgive the self that youknow in your heart of hearts.
Or if you have already acceptedthat challenge of discipleship,
been baptized into Christ'sbody, but you need a family of
(17:34):
people to help you with thathard work.
To walk with you, to love you,and to help you see yourself as
beloved in the eyes of God nomatter what.
(17:54):
And you think that this churchmight be that family.
Well, then now is the time inour service when such decisions
might be made known publicly, aswe stand together as we are able
and sing.
Fred Craddock used to tell the story of when he was
invited to guest preach atanother church one Sunday and
was assigned to preach Jesus'parable of the prodigal son.
Craddock says that he decided tojust preach the story straight,
to focus on the end where theloving father is pleading with
(00:31):
the dutiful older brother who isstanding out in the darkness,
refusing to come into the house,because he refuses to celebrate
the return of his youngerprodigal sibling.
Craddock says that he closed hissermon talking about how God the
Father always stands ready toshow grace to all his children.
(00:54):
And then after the sermon,Craddock said, a man in the
church approached him lookinggrumpy.
I don't know whether I shouldsay that I didn't like your
sermon or I didn't like thetext, the man said.
(01:14):
Craddock asked him to say alittle bit more.
The end, he said, about the boy,the younger one.
He should have been disowned byhis father, shunned by his
family, shamed, thrown intojail, if at all possible.
That is what he deserved.
(01:36):
Not a party.
The following Sunday, Craddocksays he got pressed into
teaching a Sunday school classat his own church because a
teacher called in sick.
Oh, it'll be easy, he was told.
It's just Jesus' parable of theprodigal son.
(01:58):
So Craddock, not wanting to bescolded two weeks in a row.
Preachers never like to getscolded two weeks in a row.
Craddock decided that he wasgoing to get it right this time.
There was a man who had twosons.
He began the class with a wrysmile.
(02:20):
The older son stayed home, didhis father's bidding, worked
hard on the farm.
The younger son took his money,wasted it in a far country, came
into hard times.
He decided that he should gohome, confess his wrongdoing.
Well, when the younger son drewnear the house, he heard music
(02:43):
and dancing, and he called oneof his father's servants and
said, What is this party that'sgoing on?
To which the servant replied,Well, you know your older
brother who stayed home, workedhard, listened to his parents.
Your father appreciates him.
(03:04):
And so he's throwing him aparty.
As soon as he finished tellingthe story, Craddock says that a
woman in the front row of theclass leaned over to her husband
and said, That's how it wassupposed to go.
Today, Jesus tells anotherparable that focuses on two men.
(03:29):
One, a Pharisee, and a genuinelygood man.
He's scrupulous.
He fasts twice a week, wellabove what would have been
required.
He's generous.
He donates 10% of all of hisincome, no matter what.
(03:51):
He is a genuinely good man, andif you don't believe it, then
just ask him.
God, I thank you that I am notlike other people, he says.
Thieves, rogues, adulterers, oreven like this, tax collector.
(04:17):
The second man in the store isthe tax collector.
Which doesn't mean that he is anagent of the IRS.
It means that he is a turncoat,a sellout, a toady for the
Romans, whom all of hiscountrymen hated.
And he is genuinely a bad man.
(04:42):
And if you don't believe it,then just ask him.
This man, Jesus says, stood at adistance with his head low,
beating his breast and praying,God be merciful upon me, a
sinner.
(05:03):
And it is this tax collector,Jesus tells his disciples, who
walks away justified, not thePharisee.
I suspect that if, like Craddockdid with the story of the
prodigal son, I rewrote the endof the parable to say that the
(05:24):
good guy Pharisee walked awayjustified instead of the bad
guy, tax collector, more thanone of us would turn to our
neighbor and say, That's the wayit's supposed to be.
The Pharisee is upright.
He is upstanding.
(05:45):
He is scrupulous.
Just like the older brother ofthe prodigal who stayed home,
worked hard, kept his noseclean.
And yet neither is the focus oftheir two stories.
The older brother ends his storyoutside in the darkness,
(06:07):
listening to the party going oninside his father's house,
seething at the grace that isbeing shown his degenerate
younger sibling.
The Pharisee ends his story bywalking out of the temple, head
held high, undoubtedly respectedby his neighbors and aware of
(06:28):
it.
But as we are told, failing tohave justified himself in the
eyes of God, and undoubtedlyunaware of that fact as well.
Both are good men.
But they are both focused on howrighteous they are and on how
(06:52):
unrighteous they're convincedtheir neighbors are, and that,
my friends, is precisely wherethey have lost the plot.
Now I am sure that you will besurprised to hear it.
But even today, there are somePharisaic older brothers walking
(07:17):
around us.
You would think that over twothousand years the church would
have already been able toovercome this kind of
temptation.
You would think that by now wewould have taken to heart what
all Jesus said about this kindof thing.
(07:40):
These two parables in Luke, forexample.
Or his words to Nicodemus inJohn 3 about how God did not
send his son into the world tocondemn the world.
Or his line in Matthew's gospelabout not focusing on the speck
of sawdust that is in yourneighbor's eye, but instead
(08:04):
working on dislodging the two byfour that is sticking out of
yours.
But no.
There is something in us.
There is something in ourneighbors that would much rather
point a finger and judge thosearound us than point a thumb and
(08:29):
take a hard look at ourselves.
But that's not how God calls usto act.
That's not how God acts.
That's certainly not how Jesusacts.
(08:50):
Jesus always a friend ofsinners.
Jesus always seeking out theleast and the lost.
Jesus, known to the good,upstanding, religious people of
his day as a drunkard and aglutton because of the company
that he kept.
(09:13):
That's Jesus.
In our Old Testament lessontoday from Isaiah 42, a passage
that the church has held foreverpoints forward through time and
foretells the coming of ourLord.
We are told about how gentle Heis.
(09:37):
A bruised reed, Isaiah says, Hewill not break.
A dimly burning wick he will notextinguish.
That's Jesus.
(09:57):
If Jesus ever points a finger atsomeone and calls them out, it
is almost universally thePharisees of his world that he's
talking about.
The righteous who border onself-righteous.
The religious people, theupstanding, the older brothers
and sisters of the world whoknow just how admirable they
(10:20):
are.
Not the ones who are bent low.
Not the tax collectors.
It's not the humbled that hepoints out.
The people who get kickedaround, he's much too gentle for
that.
(10:40):
Like Isaiah says.
(12:03):
And yet, just last week, righthere in Jacksonville, there was
a perfect encapsulation of thesame kind of attitude that Jesus
is preaching against.
A sister congregation of ours,Riverside Baptist Church, now
(12:29):
known as Riverside Church atPark and King, woke up last
Monday morning to find theirpride flag ripped down, covered
in blood-red paint, and stakedto the ground with a cross.
(12:54):
Now, I feel very confident whenI say that whoever did that left
that church feeling justified intheir own eyes.
Confident of their ownrighteousness.
(13:18):
Thank God I am not like thesepeople.
And I feel sure that they leftconvinced that they had just
done something to further God'skingdom here on earth.
(13:38):
And yet I'll tell you this.
I have people right in my ownfamily, from fifteen to fifty,
who love Jesus.
But who, because of things likethis, will not darken the doors
(14:01):
of church.
Because from what they hearabout on the news, they are
convinced that church is moreabout that kind of hatred and
that kind of self-righteousnessthan it is about the
overwhelming grace of God.
(14:28):
And I suspect that some of youhere might have people in your
lives who assume that samething.
So yeah.
It has been two thousand yearssince Jesus taught this parable
(14:48):
about the tax collector and thePharisee, and that other one
about the prodigal son and hisjudgy older brother, and he said
that thing about the sawdust andthe two by four in your eye, and
he told Nicodemus about how Godso loved the world, and he said
it again and again and again andagain.
(15:12):
Twenty centuries.
Amen.
(15:38):
So there's a story that I liketo tell whenever I preach this
text that just did not fittoday.
A children's Sunday schoolteacher was teaching the story
of the parable of the Phariseeand the tax collector, where the
Pharisee says, Thank God I amnot like this tax collector.
And when she finishes, theteacher says, Now, children, let
(16:01):
us bow our heads and pray andthank God that we are not like
this Pharisee.
And then the preacher stands inthe pulpit and says,
Congregation, let us all thankGod that we are not as dense as
this Sunday school teacher.
That's not how it works.
(16:23):
But it's easy to point a finger.
It is so much harder to point athumb.
And yet that, my friends, is theway of discipleship.
Not pointing a finger, buthaving the courage and the hope
(16:46):
to point the thumb.
And it's hard.
But if you're here today and youhave that courage, and you have
that hope, and that faith inGod's overwhelming grace, not
(17:11):
just to forgive your neighborwhom you might judge, but to
even forgive the self that youknow in your heart of hearts.
Or if you have already acceptedthat challenge of discipleship,
been baptized into Christ'sbody, but you need a family of
(17:34):
people to help you with thathard work.
To walk with you, to love you,and to help you see yourself as
beloved in the eyes of God nomatter what.
(17:54):
And you think that this churchmight be that family.
Well, then now is the time inour service when such decisions
might be made known publicly, aswe stand together as we are able
and sing.
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