"No Entitlement Mentality"
Text: Ezekiel 33:7-20 & Luke 15:1-3, 11-32
3-30-2025
In the name of Him whose righteousness alone saves us, dear friends in Christ. You can be thankful that you don’t have the mind of a Pastor. When I read the Scriptures, either publicly or privately, I’m constantly thinking about how I might preach on those verses. Sometimes it even happens that the thoughts go through my mind after I’ve already prepared a sermon on one of the other 2 readings. Like last week. I was happy with how my sermon on the Epistle had turned out, but then the reading from Ezekiel 33 got my mind a churning. And I thought to myself, “Doggone it, I wish I had preached on this text instead! Oh well, maybe I will in 3 years when it comes up again.” But once I considered the Gospel for today I realized that there was a connection between them, one that I hadn’t noticed before. That explains why you heard the same Old Testament lesson 2 weeks in a row. The parable that Jesus told about the Prodigal Son is quite familiar to most of us. However, that passage from Ezekiel helps reveal a deeper meaning to it. And it’s a message that we would do well to ponder. It’s summarized in the title of the sermon: No Entitlement Mentality.
If you pay any attention to the goings on of our local and federal government, then you’ve certainly heard the term “entitlements” before. It usually is expressed in terms of dollars or costly services that people believe they’re “entitled” to receive. Sadly, all too often entitlements are confused with our rights as U.S. citizens. They’re not the same thing. But what’s so destructive about an entitlement mentality is that it fosters laziness and removes all personal responsibility for our own lives.
Really, that’s the crux of what Ezekiel was addressing with the people of Israel in our text. Over time, they had developed an entitlement mentality with their relationship to God. The Lord had made a wondrous covenant of grace with their ancestor Abraham that extended to all his descendants. The Lord promised to be their God and they would be His chosen people. He gave them the land of Canaan as a visible sign of the covenant. Eventually, through Moses, He gave the Commandments wherein God spelled out how they were expected to live as His covenant people. Knowing that they were sinners who would fail to obey those commands, God provided a way for them to have their sins removed and receive His forgiveness. That’s what their sacrifices were all about. And the Lord named Jerusalem as the place where His Temple would be. There, He would make His presence known among them. At the Temple the sacrifices were received and God’s grace and forgiveness were announced. All this was the gracious inheritance from the God of heaven to His covenant people for generation after generation.
The problem was that over time an entitlement mentality set in. It began with their bloodline. Since they were descendants of Abraham, they figured that all the gracious benefits of the covenant were their birthright. What they failed to see is that Abraham was chosen and justified by God. He believed God’s promises and his faith was credited to him as righteousness. His descendants, though, had forgotten that it was only by an active faith that they too would receive that righteousness from God. And so, without faith they adopted the idea that they were entitled all God’s gifts; as if God owed them His grace and mercy as part of their inheritance.
A product of that thinking was the belief that all their rituals and sacrifices were righteous acts that were kind of like putting coins in a celestial piggy bank. They felt that God was obliged to recognize those actions and thus declare them righteous. Never mind the fact that they had done all of it without faith. Never mind the fact that those sacrifices were supposed to be offered up with a repentant heart, confessing their sins, pleading for God’s forgiveness by grace. Rather, they figured they could live in disobedience to God because their past acts of righteousness would prevent Him from punishing them. The outward command had been followed and they felt entitled to receive His blessings. Woven into all this, they believed that as long as the Temple stood in Jerusalem, God was obliged to protect them.
Even though they had been warned repeatedly by the prophets to let go of this false, destructive, entitlement mentality, they continued on with it. Finally, God had had enough. He allowed foreign armies to invade and conquer them. Ezekiel and many Israelites were taken out of the Promise Land and into captivity. And the people sat there, a long, long way from home wondering what had gone wrong. Their land had been taken from them. Soon, Jerusalem and the Temple were also destroyed. Eventually, as you heard in verse 17, they decided that God was not being fair. He was accused of reneging on His promises, when in reality, the opposite was true. So, Ezekiel spelled it out for them. Your righteousness is not an entitlement based on a good deed here and there in the past. Rather, it’s the product of an ongoing, active faith in God’s grace. No matter who you are, if you repent of your sins and trust in His merciful forgiveness, He’ll declare you righteous. Then your relationship with your heavenly Father will be restored and with it comes all the wonderful benefits of your inheritance as His chosen people.
Have you made the connection to the parable in our Gospel text yet? Those two brothers are representative of the people that Ezekiel is describing. The younger brother foolishly turned from his place in God’s family. He thought he was entitled to something because he was a son. But he abandoned his relationship with his father. Instead, he went off and squandered his inheritance of grace in wicked living. He awoke one day to find that all the benefits of his former status as a son and all the goodness from the past were now gone. The wickedness that he had embraced couldn’t satisfy his hunger or his need to be loved. He longed for what had formerly been his back in his father’s household. It brought him to repentance. So with a confession on his lips, he returned to his father. With love and mercy, the father welcomed him home. All his wicked living was forgotten. He was forgiven and his inheritance as a son was restored.
The older brother was like the righteous people who had turned to wickedness in Ezekiel’s message. That brother also had an entitlement mentality. He was going through all the motions of being a righteous son, but in his heart, he had abandoned his relationship with his father. In his head he had squandered his inheritance in the reckless living of wicked thoughts and self-righteousness. Outwardly he had “stayed home” in obedience to his father but his actions were not motivated by love. He felt that his father “owed him” for sticking around. He believed he was entitled to the benefits of his inheritance as a son because of his righteous deeds of the past, rather than as a result of his father’s gracious and abundant love. He was just as lost as his brother had been.
Jesus never tells us what the outcome was for that older brother. It’s as if he were saying, “This could go either way. If he repents, he too will be welcomed home and have his inheritance restored. If not, he will have squandered the father’s goodness and is dead to the family.”
You know, it really doesn’t matter which of these brothers that you identify with. In both of them we see the entitlement mentality was their downfall. I can’t say it any stronger than this: God doesn’t owe you anything! Because of our sins the only thing we’re entitled to is His wrath and punishment. Don’t point to righteous things of your past like your Baptism, your Confirmation, your offerings, or your worship attendance as if those will somehow offset your current disobedience to God. We may take pride that in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod we have pure doctrine. But if we don’t live by that doctrine, then we’re just as lost as any unbeliever. My point is that we can squander these blessings of our inheritance from God if we abandon our relationship with Him and rely on righteous deeds of the past.
Regardless of how far you’ve wandered from the Father or how wicked you’ve been, there is hope. Verse 33 of our text says, “As I live, declares the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways…” Repent and return to God with a confession on your lips. He has promised to forgive you for Jesus’ sake. He is your righteousness. Trust in Him and He will welcome you home and restore all the benefits of your inheritance as a Child of God. And together, God’s family will celebrate at the feast He has prepared for us in heaven. To Him be the glory, now and forever. Amen!
Soli Deo Gloria!