Luke 15:29 but he answered his father, ‘Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends.

These are the words of the older brother. He is the firstborn. Jesus Christ is the firstborn of the children of God. Do his words sound like something Jesus would say? No, of course not. While the elder son is not Satan his words sure sound like something Satan would say.

For some time now I have been warning others not to listen to what others say, look to what they do. That goes along with “actions speak louder than words” but we do not always get to see others in their daily activities.

The elder son got angry when he discovered the celebration. Why?

From my point of view, me being a typical human, I can hear the elder son thinking. “That is my calf they slaughtered, they stole it from me.” Once again, that is me putting myself in the elder son’s place with my own set of emotional problems. That does not make it true, it just fits my own personal failings.

Here is one more personal thought which comes from me and my failings. The elder son was working to enrich his inheritance. He considered it his and not his father’s. An inheritance is either granted before death or left in a will upon death. The father had not died, all was still his, not the elder son’s. So the elder son was looking after his own self-interest. Selfishness.

When we speak, are we trying to glorify ourselves or God? OUCH? Yes I can say that from a place of my own personal failings. Sometimes it is just easier to sound good than be good.

When we share our own failings we are expressing lessons learned. That does not mean the listener is guilty of those same feelings. We may have similar flaws, maybe even the same ones, but when we discover them, it is not what we say that matters, it is what we do about it.

Perhaps that is why the proverbs are so effective, because we often find our own failing printed out for everyone to read. Be careful with that thought. Seeing the failings of others in a proverb does not give us the right to beat them over the head with it. The bible is not our own personal club.

And yes, that has happened to me.

Exodus 20:5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me,

Hate is not the opposite of love. Indifference is the opposite of love. We will not find that in any of our dictionaries. Why I can say that is because while God is love, which I believe, He is also a jealous God. What we have a problem with is in how He treats those who hate Him.

Merriam Webster defines hate as intense hostility. Why is left up to the hater.

In order to hate God one must believe there is a God. Unbelief is indifference to the possibility of God’s existence. If love is believing God then unbelief is indifference, the opposite of love.

Now we are left with the issue of how anyone could possibly hate a God they know exists.

Perhaps it is easier to understand from the concept of His first commandment. You shall not have any gods before me. Putting anything before God is not an act of rebellion. We have to swear our allegiance to God before we can rebel against Him. So perhaps, and I leave room here for other thoughts, that hating God is refusing to swear allegiance to Him after He has made Himself known to us.

A prime example of this thought is Satan. The raw definition of the name Satan is adversary. He is the opposition party to put it in broader terms, He opposes everything that is true, the liar. He opposes everything that is righteous, the Anti-christ.

We see Satan first in the garden tempting Eve with a lie, “you can be as God.” Because of this act, God cast Satan out into the world, away from God’s Glory. Why?

If we look at Satan’s first official act of rebellion, it was against mankind. We can reason amongst ourselves in human terms but Satan was not human, he was created eternal.

Was it jealousy? God came to seek out man in the garden every morning. Satan had to come to God. Reference Job 1:6 Satan might have said to himself that God was lowering Himself to the level of man, but not so with Satan. I say might but that is only a possibility from a human perspective. Satan was an Archangel, one of the named, but he was not God.

If Satan loved God why would he not honor God’s expression of love?

That thought comes to me via the parable of the prodigal son where his brother did not rejoice with the father in his brother’s return. In Luke 15:29 he sounds like Satan.