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Luke 14 – The Wedding Invitation

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This passage is as follows:

 

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.’”

 

Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.  Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.  For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?  Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’  Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?  And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.  So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

 

“Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?  It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile.  It is thrown away.  He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

 

(End of passage)

 

In chapter 13, we learned that it is not enough to eat with Jesus or to listen to him teach in the streets.  We must repent and follow Jesus in through the narrow door.  We must abide with him and get to know him to such a degree that he knows us.  It is not enough to go to a church and listen to the sermons.  It is not enough to keep church laws and prescriptions.  We need to change our ways to the degree that our ways are the Lord Jesus Christ’s ways.

 

Original sin is putting ourselves above God and deciding for ourselves what is right and wrong without God.  In chapter 13, Jesus heals a woman on the Sabbath Day.  The synagogue ruler tells people not to come for healing on the Sabbath even though there is no restriction in Jewish law against this.  This is a good example of someone deciding for himself what is right or wrong without God.  The scriptures even tell that if there is an animal in need on the Sabbath, you should help it.  So much more a person.  Well, Jesus put these Pharisees to shame.  When we get to chapter 14, we have Jesus healing on the Sabbath again.

 

Verses 1-6,

 

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.

I wonder who the ruler of the Pharisees was.  It does not say.  But we know that there were some Pharisees that followed Jesus.  Perhaps it was Nicodemus.

 

Why is it that the Pharisees don’t answer Jesus when he asks if it is lawful to heal on the Sabbath?  Perhaps they heard about what happened the last time they challenged him on this item.  Jesus asks them which one of them having a son or an ox that fell into a well, would not immediately pull him out.  Again, they do not reply.  They know Jesus is right.

 

Jesus then tells them a parable.

 

Verses 7-11,

 

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.”

 

Why did Jesus tell them this parable?  Jesus noticed how they chose places of honor.  I wonder if we have any examples of people doing this today?  People shoving others out of the way so they are in the front or middle of a picture?  Watch a gathering of politicians and see how they do this.  Did Jesus imply anything more by saying, “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted?”  He sure was implying something.  Not only does it happen in this life, but the case will be in heaven as well.

 

Jesus goes on to tell how else he meant it to be applied.

 

Verses 12-14,

 

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.”

Now I wonder how many people there were poor, crippled, lame, or blind.  We know that there was a man there with dropsy.  There were also many people there seeking the place of honor.  Will any Pharisee make a claim to that?  Will a Pharisee speak up?

 

Verses 15-24,

 

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.’”

 

So, right away, a Pharisee spoke up and said, “Blessed are those that will eat bread in the kingdom of God.”  What do you think this guy is thinking?  He is probably thinking that he will be one of these blessed people.  He probably is thinking that he has done all the right things to get there.  How does Jesus respond to this?

 

Jesus tells another parable about a man that gave a great banquet and invited many.  When the time came they all gave excuses.  The man brought in all the poor, crippled, blind, and lame.  Then he brought in whoever else he could bring in from strangers to be found in the streets.

 

Does this parable have any implications for the Pharisees?  Yes, Jesus is implying that those at the banquet in heaven won’t be the Pharisees.  This is a major theme of the gospel of Luke.  Some people in Luke’s day may have been wondering why Luke and Paul were preaching in Greece about a Jew.  This explains it.  What God had intended for the Jews was now being given to others in the world, and God’s servants were traveling the streets of the world to invite others to the kingdom of God.

 

Luke now focuses on the crowds that are following Jesus.

 

Verses 25-33,

 

Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.  Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.  For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?  Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’  Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?  And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.  So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

 

Is Jesus telling us they we must hate our relatives?  Must we loathe ourselves?

 

This isn’t about loathing ourselves or hating our relatives.  What Jesus is saying here is that we must love him to the point that in comparison to relatives or self it seems like hate.  His point is that must count the cost in following him.  This is the second time in the gospel of Luke that he compares following him to bearing our own cross.  It isn’t easier to live a life and follow Jesus.  It is easier to just live a life.  Following Jesus is going to give you more to do.  Better behavior will be expected of you.  Non-Christians will ridicule you.  Some people persecute Christians.  The apostles all met a violence because of their faith.  All were killed violently except for John who was thrown into a vat of hot oil.  Many Christians around the world in the last few years were killed for their faith.

 

What does Jesus mean when he says, “any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple?  Does he mean that we should set all our possessions on the curbside?  Later in the gospel of Luke, Jesus will say that before he said that they should not take any money with them, but now they should take money with them.  So, Jesus is not saying that we should just throw away or give away our possessions.  Jesus is saying that we should relinquish control of our possessions and put God in charge of them.  Following Jesus means a new cause.  No longer do we have a cause to see how many things we can accumulate before we die.  Instead, we have a goal to store up heavenly treasures – people that we take with us to heaven.

 

One more thing Jesus says in verses 34-35,

 

“Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?  It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile.  It is thrown away.  He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

 

Can salt really lose its taste?  Not really.  Many forms of salt in Jesus’ day were mined raw or taken from a marsh.  In Jesus’ day, they got most of their salt from the Dead Sea, which probably had both other minerals and some algaes.  It would contain other minerals or plant material.  If the salt came into contact with a substantial amount of water, you would be left with the taste of just the minerals or swamp algae.  In such a case, you would just throw it away.

 

How is Jesus applying this analogy?

 

Jesus may be applying this to the Pharisees, who stopped doing good works to just serve themselves.  This also applies to Christians that stop doing good works.

 

Song: Come to the Feast by Sandra McCracken