Let’s look together at Luke chapter 14 tonight. That’s found on page 873 in the pew Bibles; Luke chapter 14.
Kenneth Bailey was a respected scholar and teacher of Middle Eastern New Testament studies and he wrote a number of books that examine the life and ministry of Jesus through the eyes of Middle Eastern culture and traditions. And when it came to discussing the next couple of chapters in the gospel of Luke, Bailey says that “Luke 14 and 15 have in them some of the greatest passages in all of Scriptures because here, we find the unqualified offer of free grace set forth in all of its majesty. But,” he says, “what often happens is that the theological masterpiece that is Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son, oftentimes overshadows what we find here in chapter 14 with the parable of the great banquet.” And yet these parables that we find in the first part of Luke chapter 14, they may not have the same widespread recognition and notoriety that the parable of the prodigal son has, but they are compelling on their own. And in some ways, the very fact that they are overlooked and overshadowed by the parable of the prodigal son is fitting for what this chapter is all about. Because this passage that we are looking at tonight is about humility. It is about the overlooked and the insignificant.
So the next two chapters in Luke’s gospel, they are going to make it clear to us – sometimes in unsettling ways but always memorable ways – just how wide open is the offer of the free grace of God in the Gospel through Jesus Christ. God’s grace is free. It is completely undeserved. And the Gospel goes to unlikely places and to unlikely people. And so the question for us is, “How will God’s grace impact how we live and how will it impact those whom we love?” I think the answer according to this passage tonight is that the Gospel sends us to lowly places and to lowly people. So that will be our outline for this passage – lowly places and lowly people. Before we read God’s Word, let’s ask Him for our help.
Our Father, thank You for drawing us again today to close this Lord’s Day with Your Word, to hear what You have to say to us. There is nothing else that we need to hear, there is nowhere better that we could be than to be right here, hearing Your Word and being reminded of Your grace, the free offer of Your love in Christ and the forgiveness of sins and the call to then follow You in a way that honors and glorifies You. Would You help us to do that tonight by Your Spirit? Speak Lord, for Your servants listen. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Luke chapter 14, verse 1:
“One Sabbath, when he went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching him carefully. And behold, there was a man before him who had dropsy. And Jesus responded to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, ‘Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?’ But they remained silent. Then he took him and healed him and sent him away. And he said to them, ‘Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?’ And they could not reply to these things.
Now he told a parable to those who were invited, when he noticed how they chose the places of honor, saying to them, ‘When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this person,’ and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.’
He said also to the man who had invited him, ‘When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.’
When one of those who reclined at table with him heard these things, he said to him, ‘Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!’ But he said to him, ‘A man once gave a great banquet and invited many. And at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’ But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’ So the servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.’ And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’ And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.’’”
The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of our God endures forever.
Lowly Places
It’s dinner time again in the gospel of Luke. Verse 1 says that “One Sabbath, when he went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching him carefully.” Have you ever noticed how much of Jesus’ ministry took place around the dinner table? If you remember, it was at a meal at the Pharisees house that the sinful woman came to Jesus and she washed His feet with her tears. She anointed Him with fragrant oil. And it was at another meal in chapter 11 that Jesus shocked the Pharisees by not washing first before the meal. And of course the most famous meal in all of the gospels is the one Jesus ate with His disciples the night before the cross. “The Lord Jesus, on the night before He was betrayed, He took bread, and when He had given thanks He broke it and said, ‘This is My body which is for you.’ And in the same way, He also took the cup after supper saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in My blood.’”
You see, so much of the Gospel story revolves around meals and that seems to be especially true in the gospel of Luke. There are seven meal scenes in this gospel that are not found in the three other gospels. In fact, someone has called the gospel of Luke “the gospel of hospitality.” And Jesus doesn’t limit Himself to only a particular type of person in the meals that He attends. No, He ate with the pious and the prestigious but He also ate with the sinners and the tax collectors. And it’s in this passage that He is back at the house of a Pharisee and again on the menu is a healthy portion of conflict. What we find is this man, verse 2, a man with dropsy appeared before Jesus and Jesus healed the man on the Sabbath. Now we have already seen on a number of occasions how the Pharisees objected to Jesus healing on the Sabbath Day. And in this case, this healing was for a man who probably had a condition similar to what we would call edema. It was something that involved the retention of fluid in the body that was an indication of a more serious underlying condition. And verse 6 tells us that the Pharisees and the lawyers objected to the healing but they were unable to reply to what Jesus had done and to what Jesus said. They were unable to reply to Jesus’ display of compassion. But they couldn’t reconcile what Jesus was doing in this display of mercy with their own inconsistencies in their system of doctrine.
But really, when we think about this miracle, it really serves as more of a backdrop for the parables that Jesus tells in this passage because they are parables about those who are impressive and those who are not and how they come together around a table. You see, the dinner table is a microcosm of all of life because it’s at the dinner table where conversations take place. It’s where relationships are forged. Life’s major milestones are marked at meals. There’s birthdays and anniversaries and even deaths. It’s where we display who we really are. Because on the one hand, at the dinner table we are able to display service and sharing and generosity and gratitude and self-control, and yet on the other hand, aren’t there also times in which we complain and we overindulge and we take for granted the simple blessings of daily bread.
I saw an article recently about the outsized influence of our middle school friends. And the writer was talking about all of the changes that happen between childhood and adolescence. And she says that if you want to know whether your child is going to be happy or miserable, confident or anxious, well – being a fly on the wall at lunch will probably tell you a lot. I read that and I think, you know, I don’t know that is stops at middle school because even on our Wednesday night dinners at the church can be so much about sitting at the right place and with the right people. We’re all like that in some sense and we probably reveal a whole lot more about ourselves at dinner than we really care to admit. It said a lot about the guests at the Pharisees house that they chose the places of honor when they were invited to dinner.
Now this was a culture in which guests were seated around the table and they were seated around the host in order of their importance. So there was a great deal of presumption among this crowd about their own importance. There was a presumption about which seats they deserved to sit in. You see, they had gotten too big for their britches and their egos were so inflated, their heads were so inflated with pride that they could barely fit around this table. And Jesus confronts that. Now our meals are not mostly this way. Most of our meals are more casual. It’s only the special occasions or the formal settings that reserve the best places close to the head of the table. But there are probably a few of us here who make a concerted effort to get to a wedding reception in time to not be at the back of the line, right? And there’s also a pretty established custom around here of making sure that party hosts are duly recognized and identified on the invitations that go out for wedding showers and baby showers and engagement parties, those kinds of things. None of us want to get overlooked. None of us want to be passed over. None of us want to be snubbed in some way.
But in Jesus’ parable, He says that when you are invited to a wedding feast, don’t take the places of honor. Don’t take the places that are elevated and then risk being put to shame by being moved somewhere else. He says, “No, go and sit in the lowest place.” And if the host wants to elevate you at some point, that’s all well and good, and then you’ll be honored, verse 10, in the sight of everyone there. Verse 11, Jesus says, “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” Of course Jesus is talking about more than just table etiquette here, but He is using the occasion of a dinner gathering to say something about the kingdom of God. And what He’s saying quite clearly is that the kingdom of God is about the way of humility. And what Jesus is calling for here is a reorientation of everything that we value and everything that we pursue. He’s calling for us to reexamine why we do what we do.
And there are plenty of things in ministry in the church that may come with some degree of honor or notoriety. Maybe it’s having a title or being an officer or chairing a committee and having a say in the decisions that are made. Maybe it’s helping with an event that’s going to attract a big crowd that looks good on social media. Maybe it’s speaking at a conference, writing books, having a blog or a podcast. Those things are all out front and public and can be occasions for receiving honor, and yet couldn’t we say, shouldn’t we say that so much of the Christian life is about what takes place behind closed doors and when no one is looking. It’s about our choice of words. It’s about giving up, sacrificing our time to spend with other people and listening to them and praying with them. It’s about caring for others in ordinary and often mundane and unspectacular ways. It’s about caring for aging parents. It’s about loving a spouse with dementia. It’s about caring for the poor and the vulnerable that are among us. What does James say in the book of James? “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” But there’s no recognition in that. There’s no honor that comes with such humble service to God.
But you see, the problem, the problem with seeking to be honored and exalted is that we will end up only doing those things that get noticed and then we will leave undone those things that are called for being done in a quiet and a selfless way. I come to a passage like this, it makes me reevaluate everything that I do. It makes me reevaluate everything that we do as a church. Do we have it right? Are we spending our time in the right things and in the right places? Jesus is calling for us to humble ourselves and He’s calling for us to take the lowest place.
Isn’t that what is so compelling about a story like the one of Pat Tillman. If you remember, Pat Tillman was an NFL strong safety. He gave up millions of dollars in a starting position for the Arizona Cardinals about 20 years ago. And he went to serve after 9-11 in the military. And he didn’t choose a place as an officer in the army. No, he chose to go on the front lines. And his story is a compelling one. It’s one that we still remember and talk about today. We wouldn’t remember him if he was just a strong safety, but we remember him now for the sacrifice that he made. And it’s a compelling story, but isn’t it even more compelling what we find in the Gospel? That Jesus did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation and took the form of a servant, and coming in the likeness of man, He humbled Himself to the point of death and He gave His life for us, in our place and for our salvation so that one day “at the name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father.” There’s no more compelling story than the story of the Gospel. And we see Jesus’ example of taking the lowest place and He’s calling us to do those things which do not get recognized, do the things that no one sees, that maybe no one wants to do. But we can know that God sees and God knows. And what He tells us in verse 11 is that everyone who humbles himself will be exalted in the kingdom of God. So Jesus addresses the guests at the dinner in this passage.
Lowly People
But then, He turns His attention to the man who had invited Him. And we can see in this part of the passage that there is a connection between lowly places and lowly people because Jesus here upends the usual practice of how invitations are handed out for a dinner party. He says not to invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or your rich neighbors but, verse 13, “invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind.” See, He’s urging them not to operate according to whether their guests can repay the favor but by looking to the blessing and the favor of God that comes at the resurrection of the just.
Someone at the dinner table said, seems to almost blurt it out, “Blessed is everyone who will eat in the kingdom of God.” It seems like such a spiritual and even a godly thing to say, doesn’t it? And yet it reminds me in some way of a story I heard about Martyn Lloyd-Jones one time. He was preaching passionately on some particular topic, maybe it was a controversial topic in some way, and he said he heard from the congregation a very hearty, “Amen!” to what he had said. And he stopped his sermon and he said, “Well that sounded like a very self-righteous, ‘Amen!’’” And I think there may be something about this man from Mark as he throws this out there in this dinner table. This man’s beatitude, it sounds a little self-righteous; it sounds like a loaded comment.
You’ve probably heard of the story about the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was 1947, a Bedouin shepherd boy named Mohammad Adeeb, he was tending to some goats near the western shore of the Dead Sea. And when one of his goats wandered off, he went after him and he stumbled upon a cave that he had never seen before. And he randomly threw a rock into that cave and wherever the rock landed, it brought about a crash. It broke something. And so he came back later and he found several clay jars that would become what some have said is the greatest archeological find in history, certainly in the 20th century. And in those jars that he stumbled upon there, there were close to 1,000 manuscripts that date back to 300 BC all the way up to the time of Jesus and they were stored and kept in these jars in these caves. They were preserved. And on the text of these scrolls, there were written three languages – Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. And on one of the scrolls is called “The Scroll of the Messianic Rule.” And it tells us something about the Messianic expectation. What was the expectation in that time for the Messiah? And here’s what it said. It said, “When God reveals Messiah He shall come with the men of renown at the head of the whole congregation of Israel and they shall sit before Him, each in order of his dignity, according to his place in their camps and marches.” And it also says that excluded from those camps and marches were those who were paralyzed, lame, blind, deaf, dumb and blemished. It says that when they gathered for the common table to eat and to drink new wine, all the congregation of the community shall utter a blessing, each man in the order of his dignity. In other words, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God.”
And yet you can hear in that description there is still that nagging sense that the blessing will be according to a person’s dignity or a person’s position of honor. But Jesus on the other hand, He challenges that. He challenges those expectations and He tells them a parable that illustrates the wide reach of God’s grace. And He says that a man gave a great banquet and invited many, and yet when the time came and everything was ready, everyone who had been invited started to make all sorts of excuses. They were flimsy excuses to say the least. It’s reminiscent of some of the excuses that we may make to miss or to skip out on coming to worship and to hear the preaching of the Gospel. We hear all kinds of excuses like, “Well, Ole Miss and State had a home game this weekend.” Or, “The kids have baseball games all day.” Or, “Can’t I just worship God just as well on the golf course or in the deer stand.” And there’s excuses after excuses. That’s the same thing that we hear in this passage. They’re making excuse after excuse not to come to the banquet to which they had been invited.
So what does the master of the house do? Verse 21 says that they became angry and he sent his servant to invite in “the poor and crippled and blind and lame. And yet when there was still room, he sent the servant back out to the highways and to the hedges to compel the people to come until the house was full.” You see, in Jesus’ parable, the dinner table becomes a picture of the kingdom of God. And this dinner party, it’s filled with outsiders and misfits; it’s filled with the weak and the helpless. Jesus says in verse 24, “I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.” What he’s saying is that the kingdom of God is not for those who think they are the elite or the insiders. No, the kingdom of God is for the lowly and the humble. It is for all those who receive the invitation and they hear the call of God and they come without any excuses whatsoever.
Now doesn’t that say something to us about the people to whom we are called to go with the Gospel? Jesus says to go into the streets and the lanes of the city, to go out into the highways and hedges. I think He’s saying something to us that we are to go out from the classrooms and the ballfields, we are to go out from the boardrooms and the country clubs and we’re not to neglect those people, but He’s calling us to go into city schools and homeless shelters. He’s calling us to go into prisons and to recovery groups. He’s calling us to go to the Mission Firsts and the Families Counts and the Mustard Seeds around us. Because what happens as we seek to build our network and we want to make a name for ourselves? We end up shrinking our circle of influence down to the top 1% and there’s a whole city full of people out there who need the Gospel, who need to hear the good news of God’s grace in Christ Jesus.
Darrell Bock, a commentator on the book of Luke, he writes in one of his commentaries on this passage, he says, “A good litmus test of a community is to see how many activities it engages in that are outwardly directed as opposed to being self-serving.” Some of those things that I just mentioned, we have those who go to the prisons and you can get involved there by calling the church and finding out more. We have those who go to homeless shelters and elsewhere. Call the church and find out ways to get involved. But you know another way to be more involved and to engage more outwardly in our community? It’s to be a part of our Serve Day this weekend and to see the places we can go and to the people to whom we can go and to take the Gospel and to share the good news of Christ to them. I hope you’ll come along.
And as we close tonight, let me just say this. When Jesus talks about the poor and the crippled and the lame and the blind, He’s talking about more than just the poor and the crippled and the lame and the blind. He’s talking about all of those who are on the outskirts, who are overlooked and neglected in some way. It’s broader than just those things that He says there. Which, you know what, He’s also not talking about less than the blind, the crippled, the lame and the poor. You may know that I have a favorite Sunday School class. Preachers are probably not supposed to have a favorite Sunday School class. It’s kind of like a sports announcer shouldn’t have a favorite team in a game that he’s calling, but I have a favorite Sunday School class and I’m not ashamed to say it – it’s the Special Friends class here at our church. And at the class lunch for the Special Friends last weekend, someone mentioned how those with disabilities and special needs are largely unreached with the Gospel. And I found a statistic this week that said only 5-10% of the world’s disabled are effectively reached with the Gospel, making the disability community one of the largest unreached or hidden people groups in the world.
Now that should get our attention. And if we have a ministry here that’s focused on children and youth and college and young adults and men and women and seniors, shouldn’t we not also have a ministry that has a focus and an outreach, looking outward, to the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind in our city, to those who have special needs, that we would have a heart that extends to them with the Gospel, that they would not be unreached but reached because the fields are ripe for the harvest. Almost every week when I finish preaching and I go down to the foot of the pulpit the first people – almost every week – the first people to greet me with a smile, a hug, a pat on the head and sometimes even a kiss on the cheek are members from that Special Friends class. And for me, it doesn’t get any better than that. And if that’s not a picture of the kingdom of God, I don’t know what is.
Let’s pray.
Father, we thank You for the ways in which Your Word again convicts us and challenges us to see the blind spots in our own lives and to look out and to see the fields that are ripe for the harvest. Would You put in us a heart of compassion and would You show us places in our lives, the margins, help us to create margins in our lives to go out into the city streets and the lanes and into the highways and into the hedges and to invite those who may not feel like they have been invited, to extend to them the good news that You have given to us – the good news of Your love, of Your salvation, of eternal life at the banquet, the great banquet in Your presence forever. We long for that day. We look forward to it. Would You help us to persevere and to be faithful as we go towards that day. And we pray all this in Jesus’ name, amen.