Invited, Brought or Compelled?
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Luke
Luke
CONTEXT OF REDEMPTION THAT WE SPEAK FROM:
Salvation is different from redemption
You cannot save one who is not redeemed but you can deliver the redeemed.
Example: If someone is in an accident and is hurt, you would ask a doctor if he could save them and they would work to do so. But if the person was killed in the accident then and you asked the doctor to save them, then he would say no I cannot, they are dead.
In the same way, we are dead and thus redeemed and now we enter into the salvation of the Lord.
CONTEXT OF PASSAGE:
Jesus went to a house of a rule of the Pharisees to dine no the Sabbath
Jesus is being watched carefully
Jesus heals a man, disreguarding the approval or disaproval of the lawers and Pharisees
Jesus silences the lawyers and Pharisees
Jesus begins teaching through parable.
POINTS TO UNDERSTAND WITHIN PASSAGE:
This is not telling you how to throw a party, but is telling you what God is doing.
This is not telling you how to throw a party, but is telling you what God is doing.
Jesus has ceased proclaiming the Kingdom of God is at hand due to the rejection of the Jews
Jesus has begun teaching the disciples and speaking in parables
In each of the parables there is shown to be a delay (to the Kingdom come)
CONTEXT OF RELIGIOUS LAW OF THE TIME:
It had become largley/completley merit based
The system was lorded over the people
With over 400 volumes of commentary on the law, it had become impossible not just to keep but to even know
The Pharisees were thus a self-righteous sect
POINTS TO UNDERSTAND WITHIN PASSAGE:
This is not telling you how to throw a party, but is telling you what God is doing.
Jesus has ceased proclaiming the Kingdom of God is at hand due to the rejection of the Jews
Jesus has begun teaching the disciples and speaking in parables
In each of the parables there is shown to be a delay (to the Kingdom come)
“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.”
LUKE 14:8-11
Summary:
For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
If you lift yourself up by your own merit, meaning your own produced holiness then you will be humbled. If you have no merit of self you will be lifted up.
Thus, Jesus goes from here to illustrate how this will take place:
12 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. 13 But when you give a reception, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 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.”
Luke 14:12-14
Again, this is not discussing how to throw a party, but it is contrasting what Christ is doing verse the Pharisees.
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!”
Luke 14:
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.’
Foolish Excuses
Foolish Excuses
16 But He said to him, “A man was giving a big dinner, and he invited many; 17 and at the dinner hour he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come; for everything is ready now.’ 18 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.’ 19 Another one said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please consider me excused.’ 20 Another one said, ‘I have married a wife, and for that reason I cannot come.’
The slave or servant is perhaps demonstrative of John the Baptist and what had taken place at the early ministry of Christ.
Foolish Excuses - the people invited didn’t just give excuses but gave foolish ones
For example…an invitation such as this would have included the wife.
The point is not that those invited are busy, but that they are unwilling to 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.’
We have moved from the wealthiest and the percieved most worthy to come (the Pharisees) to those who are still of the city but whom are considered unworthy: the poor, crippled, blind and lame.
The status has changed from invitation (from which no-one came of their own decision) to “bring”. These are those who even if they were to desire, they could not come of their own might. They do not have the status, ability or know how to come. Someone must bring them.
That my friends is what Jesus came to do. To seek and save the lost. To bring those who cannot of their own strength come. To save those left wondering in the streets.
I believe this could very well be speaking of the election of elect Israel so that all that of Israel are not Israel.
Elect to Israel: The gospel be preached first to the Jew then the gentile. (not order of importance but chronology)
Israel/Shem, Ethiopian Eunuch/Ham, Cornelius/Japath (the gospel preached unto all the world
And thus after elect Israel what do we read:
22 And the slave said, ‘Master, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’ 23 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.
Luke 14:
Now we go out of the city into all of the highways and we move from invitation, to bringing into, to now compelling.
Elect to Israel: The gospel be preached first to the Jew then the gentile. (not order of importance but chronology)
Compelling is to put constraints upon and force one. Thus you have all heard of a term “irresistible grace”. …don’t get stuck on a term
Israel/Shem, Ethiopian Eunuch/Ham, Cornelius/Japath (the gospel preached unto all the world
Personal decision does not determine destiny, but it is God’s decision.
What Jesus is saying is, I have stripped it of all merit of the flesh
Man comes by the constraint and grace of God.
“it has been done” - it is finished.
Jesus didn’t simply die for you, He died in your place so that you cannot die.
Let me put it this way:
Personal decision does not determine destiny, but it is God’s decision.
The immediate question that I get:
If it is not man’s decision then why send missionaries?
Isn’t it interesting that we find it more important to go out as missionaries to “save people from hell” than because God told us to.
We do not save one single person from hell. Jesus said upon the cross, “it is finished”
We now go in obedience and in the power of the finished work of Christ.
It is not dependent upon us my friends, and I refuse to lead this church down a road that would hold such a manipulative concept over the heads of it’s congregation.
Look at verse 23 and note that the people are compelled to come and the house is what? It is filled.
The house is full. How many will be missing?
There will not be one person in Heaven who wasn’t destined to be there and not one person in Hell who wasn’t destined to be there.
Not one person for whom Christ died will be in Hell.
Remember the two great victories of Christ accomplished upon the cross that I mentioned last week:
Remove Adam’s transgression
Die in the place of each of His own
Isn’t it interesting that we find it more important to go out as missionaries to “save people from hell” than because God told us to.
Again, it’s not just that Christ died “for you”, but that he died in your place so that you cannot die. Christ cannot have already died in your place and somehow you still stand at risk of death. Friends if you be of God then it is finished and that is nothing of you.
I refuse to believe, for I cannot find it in scripture that the elect of God are only found once the church gets the invitation out there
Now I am supposed to say that a church isn’t being a church unless it puts out a sermon invitation at the end...
That this is what redeems? A practice that came about in the mid 1800’s?
God gave an open invitation to show that man is desperately wicked..
…why do you not understand my speech but because you cannot
By the compelling of grace every seat will be filled, not by the invitation of man.
In this parable Jesus is destroying all such notion of merit based belief and merit evangelism.
Listen this poorly based and quickly spreading theology of “evangelism” is a repackaged “works” based theology that is poisoning our churches and leaving us wondering, “how can I speak against it?”
I would offer by explaining what Jesus is explaining in this parable.
How does one speak against good works? How can one speak against trying to reach and save the lost?
We can and we must because we know that we are not saved of any works of ourself and nobody but Jesus can compel the lost to come in.
For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste of my dinner.’ ”
Luke
Note, that those who will not taste the dinner are those of the invitation. We are back to the beginning of the parable.
This is not speaking of those who have been brought or compelled to come in.
This is speaking of those who rejected the invitation trusting in or being occupied with there own merit.
This is those who in our parable are living by their own forms of righteousness as defined in their law commentaries rather than receiving He who is the righteous one.
Remember why God gave the law my friends:
Why did God give the law.
God did not give the law as a secondary means of redemption.
In the Old Testament we read that the justified man lives by HIS (God’s) faith (Deut. 8)
The law proves
God’s righteousness
Mans inability to meat it
The natural man cannot see God - he is totally depraved.
It must be by grace and grace compels
25 Now large crowds were going along with Him; and He turned and said to them, 26 “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. 27 Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. 28 For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him, 30 saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ 31 Or what king, when he sets out to meet another king in battle, will not first sit down and consider whether he is strong enough with ten thousand men to encounter the one coming against him with twenty thousand? 32 Or else, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. 33 So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.
Luke 14:
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Salvation is different from redemption
You cannot save one who is not redeemed but you can deliver the redeemed.
Example: If someone is in an accident and is hurt, you would ask a doctor if he could save them. But if the person was killed in the accident then and you asked the doctor to save them, then he would say no…that he could not, they are dead.
In the same way, we are redeemed and now we enter into the salvation of the Lord.
In every parable we then read that the Kingdom is postponed
…why do you not understand my speech but because you cannot
By the compelling of grace every seat will be filled.
1890 when first church invitation was given
Remember: This section must be related to the prior context not to your own context
verse 26
hate= the strongest greek word for hate (you cannot change hate to more or less)
This is displaying the merit of Christ verse the merit of self
Man doesn’t want the cross of Christ, because the cross says that man is totally depraved and it is only the perfect merit of Jesus Christ.
v28
Tower = a gorgeous tower - it will cost money. You won’t bring the kingdom in by working. If this tower is the kingdom…you will not bring it in by working, because you do not have the means.
v31
language of expectancy. One knows he cannot win…you are going against insurmountable odds.
v33
the money, power and devotion -cannot be my disciple.
Now you have probably heard this text used to argue against what has recently been labeled “easy-believism”
I myself have been frustrated by the notion of someone saying they believe and demonstrating the opposited or with the concept of a get out of hell free card.
Easy believism is indeed a fallacy. The concept that if one simply admits something then they are redeemed.
However I would say that just as much of a fallicy is difficult or great or devoted believism for redemption.
That is all a merit based system
It is the merit of Christ, the compelling of God that brings you to heaven. Belief is but a gift from God, not a form of human merit.
We do not go to heaven because of our faith but because of He who is faithful.
This church believes in and thus must teach the finished work of Christ. The substitutionary death of Jesus Christ in the place of the sinner.
Grace Alone.
I tell you that not one of us here will enter that Kingdom of God based upon human merit, but praise be to God that everyone of us here that does enter the kingdom will do so by the irresistible, unrelenting and un-robable grace of God.
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You cannot save one who is not redeemed but you can deliver the redeemed.
Example: If someone is in an accident and is hurt, you would ask a doctor if he could save them and they would work to do so. But if the person was killed in the accident then and you asked the doctor to save them, then he would say no I cannot, they are dead.
In the same way, we are dead and thus redeemed and now we enter into the salvation of the Lord.