Luke 14 The Parable of the Dinner - What is your commitment?
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If you are able, please stand one more time as we hear from the word of God this morning.
Luke 14:16–24 “But He said to him, “A man was giving a big dinner, and he invited many; and at the dinner hour he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come; for everything is ready now.’ “But they all alike began to make excuses. The first one said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of land and I need to go out and look at it; please consider me excused.’ “Another one said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please consider me excused.’ “Another one said, ‘I have married a wife, and for that reason I cannot come.’ “And the slave came back and reported this to his master. Then the head of the household became angry and said to his slave, ‘Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in here the poor and crippled and blind and lame.’ “And the slave said, ‘Master, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’ “And the master said to the slave, ‘Go out into the highways and along the hedges, and compel them to come in, so that MY house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste of MY dinner.”
You may be seated.
Good morning and if you are new, welcome to Grace Community Fellowship. My name is Reed and I am the other guy here. Pastor Joe is out of town, and when he is out of town, you get me. If I am not sick.
This month, actually the last month and this month is super busy for me. We have so much going on, all great things, but just a lot going on this month and I am knee deep in all of it.
I just drove back from Michigan yesterday afternoon to be here with you this morning. I was at the nationals for trap shooting. This trip really had its hardships.
Prior to our arrival in Michigan, they had a day and a half of rain which flooded the trap. The water dispersed, there was plenty of mud to avoid, we now had to ride in on buses as we parked our cars and loaded tents, coolers, shotguns, ammo, kids, etc…and then if that wasn't hard enough, one of our kids had a mental breakdown on Friday evening around midnight, which I had to go over to another hotel, talk with the mom, the rest of our kids, make phone calls , etc…
So…with all that, I am tired, worn out, but thankful that I am seeing all of you this morning.
Let’s pray.
This morning, I have the opportunity to share with you from the book of Luke and chapter 14.
Some of this book, we will find Christ going through some of the same situations that He had earlier in Luke. I will qucikly touch a couple of point from the others this morning, but our focus will be on that of the Parable of Dinner which we will read in verses 16-24.
In verses 1-6, we see the third encounter with the pharisees concerning healing on the Sabbath.
The Pharisees seem to choose this one activity of Jesus, which in their view, outside of referring to Himself as God, the most sacrilegious, blasphemous thing that Christ did.
We have to remember that these are Pharisees, the religious elite. Self-righteous. Did you know how they became Pharisees?
During the intertestamental period, the 400 years between Malachai and John the Baptist, sometimes known as the “Silent Years”, the leadership of Israel saw the moral decline of their nation, much like today, their people walking away from the desire to seek God and walk in His ways, so they called themselves in the greek the “Pharisaios” or the set apart ones because they we devoted to keeping all the laws of God from the Old testament. They weren’t appointed by God, they appointed themselves.
Did you know that some of them though that if they kept the law perfect for one day that it would induce God to send the Messiah?
Pretty Ironic seeing that He was standing before them and they were wanting Him dead…they couldn’t see Him as He was.
In Matthew 15:12–14
Then the disciples came and said to Him, “Do You know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this statement?”
But He answered and said, “Every plant which My heavenly Father did not plant shall be uprooted.
“Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit.”
They we non-appointed blind guides.
RC Sproul said, an I am paraphrasing “the Pharisees were involved in a parade and a charade. They looked Holy, they seemed Righteous, seeking the applause of others and that was the Parade, the charade was their hypocrisy and nothing exposes a counterfeit like the genuine.”
The Pharisees couldnt stand the Messiah they wanted when He was standing in front of them and would do anything to get rid of Him, including execution.
So, Here in verses 1-6, one of the leaders of the pharisees invites Jesus to eat bread, and Jesus, knowing full well it is a trap, He goes. lets read real quick here…
Luke 14:1-3
It happened that when He went into the house of one of the leaders of the Pharisees on the Sabbath to eat bread, they were watching Him closely.
And there in front of Him was a man suffering from dropsy.
And Jesus answered and spoke to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?”
It just so HAPPENED that Christ was invited into the house of one of the leaders of the group that hated Him and just so HAPPENED there was a man there with dropsy. Dropsy was the old term for swelling of soft tissue due to excess of water.
He just HAPPENED to be there. He was a plant by the Pharisees to see if He would heal on the Sabbath again as He had done before, at least 2 other times.
But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men,
The Lord knows the thoughts of man,
That they are a mere breath.
O Lord, You have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
You understand my thought from afar.
How do you trap the one that knows all things?
So, before Christ did anything, He asked if “it is lawful to heal to on the sabbath day”. Why did He ask that?
Again, Christ knowing all things, would know Jewish law, and He knew there were exceptions in the law for emergencies on the Sabbath.
What did they say? Really, what could they say? NOTHING! So, healed Him and sent away.
But they kept silent. And He took hold of him and healed him, and sent him away.
And He said to them, “Which one of you will have a son or an ox fall into a well, and will not immediately pull him out on a Sabbath day?”
And they could make no reply to this.
He healed the man and then threw their own law back at them.
So now we come to verses 7-14…verse 7 starts off by saying,
And He began speaking a parable to the invited guests when He noticed how they had been picking out the places of honor at the table, saying to them,
Christ was invited to this dinner, it was a big deal. There would have been several people there as it said that Christ was speaking to the “invited guests”.
There would have been other Pharisees besides one of the leaders of the Pharisees. There would have been scribes. The scribes are the ones that knew the law inside and out, kind of like a lawyer today and then we know of at least one person that was not a pharisee, I would assume others were there, the whose who of Israel.
At these type of dinners, there would be 3 tables sat up, one in the middle and 1 on the right and left side, creating a U Shape.
The top dog would recline at the middle table and the next in line of honor would sit on the right and left, but in this case, verse 7 says that “He noticed how they had been picking out the places of honor at the table”.
Jesus is watching this circus…and then goes into another parable.
“When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for someone more distinguished than you may have been invited by him,
and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this man,’ and then in disgrace you proceed to occupy the last place.
“But when you are invited, go and recline at the last place, so that when the one who has invited you comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will have honor in the sight of all who are at the table with you.
“For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
And He also went on to say to the one who had invited Him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, otherwise they may also invite you in return and that will be your repayment.
“But when you give a reception, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind,
and you will be blessed, since they do not have the means to repay you; for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
When one of those who were reclining at the table with Him heard this, he said to Him, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!”
It’s not like these men would know exactly who was on the guest list.
Christ is telling them “don’t assume that you deserve the place of honor, actually it may be that someone else is coming that is more honorable. It wouldn’t look great if the one that invited you comes and tells you there is someone else more honorable…get up and move to the last seat, the back of the room.
But, when you are invited, go and recline at the last place and when the one that invited you comes and says in front of everyone there, move to a better seat, you will be honored. in front of everyone.
“For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
The Jews would have understood this as well…
“And You save an afflicted people;
But Your eyes are on the haughty whom You abase.
A man’s pride will bring him low,
But a humble spirit will obtain honor.
What in the world is Christ talking about with all this.
The Jews thought they were the only ones that would be in God’s Kingdom.
Get over yourself, you are not the only ones.
You would think that they would understand this. The prophet Isaiah prophesied about it in Hosea 2:23
“I will sow her for Myself in the land.
I will also have compassion on her who had not obtained compassion,
And I will say to those who were not My people,
‘You are My people!’
And they will say, ‘You are my God!’ ”
If we remember from last week, Jesus had already set the trajectory for Israel.
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, just as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not have it!
“Behold, your house is left to you desolate; and I say to you, you will not see Me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’ ”
Israel is set aside. The experts of the law, the religious leaders that have been awaiting the Messiah’s return have rejected Him.
Lets look at the next section of Luke 14.
But He said to him, “A man was giving a big dinner, and he invited many;
and at the dinner hour he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come; for everything is ready now.’
“But they all alike began to make excuses. The first one said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of land and I need to go out and look at it; please consider me excused.’
“Another one said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please consider me excused.’
“Another one said, ‘I have married a wife, and for that reason I cannot come.’
“And the slave came back and reported this to his master. Then the head of the household became angry and said to his slave, ‘Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in here the poor and crippled and blind and lame.’
“And the slave said, ‘Master, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’
“And the master said to the slave, ‘Go out into the highways and along the hedges, and compel them to come in, so that my house may be filled.
‘For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste of my dinner.’ ”
Again, if you recall from a couple of weeks ago while we were in Luke 12, Pastor Joe explained that when a wedding was announced back then, there was no “save the dates”, but there were a general day that it would start, to be ready to go at a moments notice around that time.
We are seeing the same thing being explained here. The guest of this feast have been invited some time ahead and now the time has come to start gathering the people together, but we see that there are some excuses for not being able to come.
The excuses for skipping the banquet are laughably bad. No one buys land without seeing it first and it could wait.
The same can be said for buying oxen, who buys oxen without looking at them as seeing if they could do the job and again, it could wait.
And what, exactly, would keep a newly married couple from attending a social event?
All three excuses in the parable reveal insincerity on the part of those invited. The interpretation is that the Jews of Jesus’ day had no valid excuse for denying Jesus’ message; in fact, they had every reason to accept Him as their Messiah.
In the parable, when the head of the household heard these excuses. he was angry.
He told his servant to forget the guest list and go into the back streets and alleyways of the town and invite “the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame” (verse 21).
The servant had already brought in the down-and-out townspeople, and still there was room in the banquet hall. So the master sent his servant on a broader search: “Go out to highways and along the hedges (country roads) and compel them to come in, so that my house will be filled” (verses 22-23).
Jesus ends the parable by relating his masters determination that “none of those men who were invited shall taste of my banquet” (verse 24).
In your Bibles, this section is probably titled “Parable of the Dinner”.
The statement that prompted this parable is key. The man who, in verse 15, looks forward to dining in the Messianic kingdom probably subscribed to the popular idea that only Jews would be part of that kingdom. The parable Jesus tells is aimed at debunking that notion, as the following explanation makes clear:
When one of those who were reclining at the table with Him heard this, he said to Him, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!”
The parable Jesus tells is aimed at debunking that notion, as the following explanation makes clear:
The head of the house is God, and the dinner is the kingdom, a metaphor that was suggested by the speaker at the table.
The invited guests picture the Jewish nation. The kingdom was prepared for them, but when Jesus came preaching that “the kingdom of heaven is near” (Matthew 4:17), He was rejected.
We see in John 1:11 “He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him.”
The detail that the invitation is opened up to society’s lowly is important.
These were the types of people that the Pharisees considered “unclean” and under God’s curse.
Jesus, however, taught that the kingdom was available even to those considered “unclean” (cf. Acts 10).
And Jesus answered and said to them, “It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick.
“I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”
You can’t help someone that doesn’t understand that they are sick.
Jesus’ involvement with tax collectors and sinners brought condemnation from the Pharisees, yet it showed the extent of God’s grace (Matthew 9:10-11). The fact that the master in the parable sends the servant everywhere to persuade everyone to come indicates that the offer of salvation would be extended to the Gentiles and “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
The head of the house is not satisfied with a partially full banquet hall; he wants every place at the table to be filled.
John MacArthur’s comment on this fact is that “God is more willing to save sinners than sinners are to be saved.”
Those who ignored the invitation to the banquet chose their own punishment—they missed out. The master respects their choice by making it permanent: they would not “taste of my banquet.” So it will be with God’s judgment on those who choose to reject Christ: they will have their choice confirmed, and they will never taste the joys of heaven.
The basic message of the Parable of the Dinner could be stated this way: “The Jewish rejection of Christ has opened the door of salvation to the Gentiles. The blessings of the kingdom are available to all who will come to Christ by faith.”
The inclusion of the Gentiles is a fulfillment of Hosea 2:23, “I will say to those called ‘Not my people,’ ‘You are my people’; and they will say, ‘You are my God.’” God is “not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9), and “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13).
How does this apply to us today?
We are really talking about commitment here. Your commitment to God.