The Dinner Party

Everyone who embraces Jesus enters a kingdom that undoes the brokenness of our world and give us an eternity our hearts long for. Everyone who refuses Jesus is left out of the Kingdom of God.

[00:00:00] You know, as you read through the Gospel of Luke like we’ve been doing, you start to feel a little bit bad for Jesus socially, I mean. It seems like every time Jesus is around people, he gets invited over to a dinner or something like that, it seems like someone’s always trying to to trap him. Can you imagine every time you get invited to someone’s house thinking this is probably a trap? They’re probably out to get me. That would be paranoia. And yet, here’s Jesus, and he’s not paranoid because it’s happening to him over and over again. And it’s going to happen to him again today. You know, as I was reading through what Jesus teaches here in Luke chapter 14 this week, I was thinking if I wanted to create a secular manifesto, a platform made up of all the things that I thought would be universally accepted as the solution to the problems of our time, what would that include? Here’s what I mean. Would you agree with me that it seems like there’s a fairly large amount of disagreement in our culture? Would you agree with that?  Would you maybe even call that hostility?  I would, I think. Doesn’t it seem like it’s about everything, that there’s nothing that goes untouched by this?  It appears to me that there is almost no world event, no political decision, no speech, no expressed opinion, no simple gesture that doesn’t conjure up an army of people who are outraged in one way or another. And I thought if I were to propose a solution to this that would be accepted by most people, sort of a here’s how to make the world a better place type proposal. What would be in it? I think it would probably contain things like everyone needs to start looking out more for each other. We need to be more loving and kind in the way that we treat other people. We need to care more about the struggles of other people. We need to be more generous with people and not assume the worst of everybody right away. Now, those are all just statements that are unattached to  Scripture, and there’s no explanation for how to make that happen. But generally speaking, I think that that is the sort of thing that would resonate with people who are tired of the way our society is right now. And I got these ideas because of what Jesus says in our passage today. The passage you just heard read. Church as I read Jesus words in Luke 14 this week, I thought, here’s the world most people want. The world doesn’t want Jesus but the irony is they want Jesus world. More specifically, they want his kingdom. I was moved this week as Jesus unfolded the loving, compassionate values of his kingdom, a kingdom where we can enter simply by trusting and following Jesus. It’s all right there for us. Everyone who embraces Jesus enters a kingdom that undoes the brokenness of our world and gives us an eternity our hearts long for, and everyone who refuses Jesus is left out of the kingdom of God. We’re in Luke chapter 14. If you have your Bible, I would keep it open to Luke 14 today. It won’t be up on the screen it’s a bit of a longer passage. Jesus is invited to a dinner party. And surprise, it’s a trap. But as he does so boldly and so eloquently, Jesus is going to use this occasion, even though it’s a trap. He’s going to use it to teach more about the kingdom. And we can frame this passage today around four kingdom values that Jesus teaches on compassion, humility, generosity, and diversity. Can you already hear it? Can you already hear that secular manifesto? If I was a principal of a high school, a public high school, and I said that our values are compassion, humility, generosity and diversity. You’d think, yeah, that’s about right. That’s about right. But these aren’t just nice words. We don’t mean them just as nice things to think about. These are character qualities of the Lord that are rooted in the gospel, and they form the foundation for new life in Christ. These aren’t just buzzwords or nice ideas. They’re not even aspirational goals.These are the realities of new life in the kingdom of God.

[00:04:38] So let’s start with compassion. The Pharisees set the trap for Jesus, this time at a dinner party. It says that they are watching him carefully. Sounds like a fun dinner party, doesn’t it? There’s a man there. He’s sick with dropsy, which is an older term for what is now called edema. It’s a swelling of your body from fluid retention. Usually it’s an indication of something like heart failure or kidney problems. I feel weird describing medical issues to the Mayo community. But some of us don’t know what these things are, I learned what edema was this week. All right. Anyway, the way this reads is different than what we’ve seen before.  It says, and behold, there was a man before him. That behold means this was sudden, and it was unexpected. Most people either approach Jesus for healing, or Jesus picks them out of the crowd for healing. But here we have a man suddenly appearing before Jesus, but not requesting to be healed. And it says, the Pharisees are watching him closely before the sick man suddenly is before Jesus, Almost like they knew this was coming. Now, I don’t know if the Pharisees knew that this guy would be there and present Jesus with this challenge, but the way it’s worded suggests that they might have known. This is now the fourth time in Luke where the Pharisees have used the Sabbath to try to condemn Jesus for breaking their rules. Twice it happened in chapter six. And one time in chapter 13. I think the reason that this is the preferred trap of the Pharisees is because the Sabbath had so many man made rules attached to it. It’s the stickiest of the traps that they could set for him. The Pharisees had taken God’s gift of rest this Sabbath day, this seventh day, and they turned it into a burden on God’s people by defining everything as work. Okay, you’re not supposed to work on the Sabbath. Well, they just went around and defined everything it seems as work. And so Jesus challenges them with with nearly the same question that he asked back in the synagogue, back in chapter six. Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not? The answer to that question is an emphatic yes. Yes, of course it is. Of course God is allowed to heal someone on the Sabbath day. And as I said before, God can heal on any day he likes to heal, including his own day on the Sabbath. In chapter six, Jesus said, The Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath. He’s saying, I am the Lord of the Sabbath. I can do what I want. And as we pointed out earlier, there’s nothing in the mosaic law that says anything about healing. It doesn’t even refer to healing when it when it references the Sabbath. So it’s totally fine. All they’ve done is they’ve just added extra biblical, man made nonsense that’s meant to give the power to the Pharisees who were in charge of making these rules. But there’s more here. The Pharisees know the right thing to do here is to heal this man. They know it. They just don’t want to admit it. That’s what Jesus exposes with his second question. Which of you having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on the Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out? Can you imagine if your son fell into a well and just walked over and said, sorry, but it’s Saturday. Uh, tread water, mom, and I’ll get you out tomorrow, right? No, of course not. Of course you’re going to pull him up out of there. These guys knew the difference between intentionally working for gain on the Sabbath, which was the work command. Right? They knew the difference between that and compassion and showing people compassion. It’s why they couldn’t reply to Jesus question. If they answer it honestly, Jesus wins. If you dig down to the heart of man made religion, or really any secular worldview. What you find there is rules and power. But if you dig down to the heart of Christianity, what you find there is grace and compassion. That’s the heart of the gospel. The heart of the gospel message is God’s grace and mercy to us. Jesus just said this back up in chapter 13, verse 34. He said his ministry is to gather God’s people together with compassion like a hen gathers her chicks under her wing. God knows we’re hurting and tired, that we’re sick with our own corruption. He knows that because of our sin in the world, we lack compassion. He knows this. The gospel, when you really understand and embrace it, restores compassion to other people. And do you know why that is? It’s because when you receive God’s compassion toward you as a sinner, it changes you. It’s not just something you receive. It’s something you become. It makes you into a different person. What happens is you start seeing the world through the lens of God’s compassion. You start seeing everyone else through the lens of what God has done for you. And that’s why our mission statement here at Calvary is passion for Christ, compassion for people. It’s not just a clever wordplay. It’s cause and effect. What God has done for us, his compassion for us has made us compassionate for others. So if you want a more compassionate world, and many people do, if you want a more compassionate world, the best possible thing you could do would be to share Jesus gospel with other people and to follow Jesus closely yourself. That’s how you would create a more compassionate world.

[00:10:43] Let’s talk about humility. Jesus notices how the the dinner guests are taking their seats. There’s some jockeying for position for people to get places of honor at the table. Now, we don’t really have this. This is not really part of our culture. I suppose there is something to be said about the head of the table. Sometimes that’s a thing for some people. In our house that’s where Ali sits. It’s just not a thing really in our culture. But let me tell you, it really is around. It’s a much bigger deal in eastern shame honor type of cultures like first century Israel would have been. But that’s true even today. Many years ago, when I was a missions pastor, I was in Hong Kong, going out to dinner with some pastors and some church leaders. I was the youngest guy in the group, but I was also the first person to the table at the restaurant. And it was a round table and it was against the wall. And so I, coming with my US culture, said, oh, what do you do? You go around to the farthest seat, so you can fill in that way. And so that’s I did. I filled in around, took the farthest chair by the wall. It was only after dinner that I was informed that I had taken the place of honor. Help an American out. Can you tell me before dinner? It’s because I was facing into the room and I should have been facing the wall instead of facing into the room that’s why. Seating in shame, honor cultures is a much, much bigger deal. And so Jesus is noticing these Pharisees are trying to get themselves into seats that demonstrate how important they think they are, and the respect that they want to draw from everybody else at the table. And Jesus uses this to teach them something about the heart attitude of those who are in his kingdom. You could read what Jesus says here like it’s simply practical advice, but it’s deeper than that. He tells them a hypothetical story about how to seat yourself for dinner at a wedding reception. I like how he changes it. He’s like, I’m not talking about this meal, guys, I’m talking about a wedding reception.  He says, if you take a place of honor and someone more distinguished shows up at that wedding feast, you might get bumped down to the kids table. You’re going to be down there sitting on a piano bench, trying not to shake the card table when you’re cutting your meat. You’re going be you’re going to be lower. And it’s going to be a shame when you stand up and you have to, you know, in front of everybody, you get taken down there. But if you start off by taking a lower position down where they’re using folded paper towel because they ran out of napkins, . If you’re down there already, then the host has the opportunity to say, come on up. What are you doing down here? Come on up to the adult table. Now that’s practical, sure, but we know that Jesus didn’t come to give us a manual for wedding reception etiquette. The seating chart here is an illustration to expose the hearts of the people. And you can see that in the final sentence of the parable. Verse 11, for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. Do you see how he widens it out? Now it’s a general principle that he’s talking about here. There are only two categories of person. There are those who are humbled, and there are those who humble themselves. There’s only two kinds of people. Jesus has been using wedding feast imagery to describe his kingdom, and that’s what’s happening here. He’s about to do it two more times. The host here is the Lord, a person that thinks that he’s a big deal and worthy of God’s honor, the honor of the host. He’s going to be humbled to find out that God doesn’t regard him as important at all. On the contrary, the person who sees himself as unworthy of the Lord’s generosity, unworthy of his mercy, but who comes to the table and sits in a low place, just grateful for the Lord’s kindness, he’s going to find himself exalted. So again, Jesus is saying that at the heart of the gospel is humility, not self-loathing. Don’t get this wrong. It’s not just talking about how terrible you are. It’s not self-loathing, but humility that comes from having a right view of yourself. See, the gospel message is of God’s mercy to us as sinners. So to receive it, you first have to admit that you’re not worthy of a seat at God’s table unless he’s going to be merciful to you. I’m not sufficient on my own. Right. You got to say that I’m not sufficient on my own. I have no honorable place with the Lord because of who I am. My identity doesn’t give me an honorable place with the Lord. That’s the starting position of a heart that is ready to be exalted by God through his grace and mercy. And this is why a person who who touts himself and his own greatness, and he demands that other people show him the proper honor, probably, probably doesn’t know Jesus. I say probably here because it could be a sin struggle. A person could genuinely know Jesus and simply struggle with issues of pride. That’s true, but a prideful, arrogant person who demands the honor of other people and isn’t repentant about that doesn’t see anything wrong with that, that person doesn’t know the Lord, even if he claims to. He doesn’t know him. Wouldn’t it be great to live in a world filled with people who were constantly showing honor to others and not looking to puff themselves up and put themselves first? Rachel and Ali went to a Forrest Frank concert last week, and she said that she was in this crowd of people and it was weird, she said. Everyone there was saying, oh, after you. Oh. Excuse me. Oh, why don’t you go first? Oh, please. Oh pardon me and all this kind of thing. There was a woman that was stood in a really long line to get into the concert venue. She got up there with her bag and her bag was too large, and she just went, oh, well, that’s okay. I’ll just run it back to my car. Like, no big deal, no problem. Rachel couldn’t figure out why everybody was so nice, and then she remembered, oh, yeah, this is a Christian concert. It’s full of Christians. It’s full of people walking around trying to show honor to everybody else and watching out for everybody else’s best interest. Look, we’re not perfect. We’re not. There are plenty of moments when a follower of Jesus can fail to live out the humility of the gospel. I fail at this. It feels like all the time. But if you want a world filled with more humble people who are deferring to the good of others and are not centered on themselves, we need more of Jesus, not less of him.

[00:17:49] And the same is true of generosity. What Jesus says next at this dinner table, what he says next is so brazen and so bold it borders on awkward. If I was at this table, I feel like I would be that Homer Simpson gift where he just goes back into the bushes. You know, I wouldn’t want to be there at all. Jesus turns to the host of this dinner. The dinner he’s at, He turns to the host of this dinner, and he says, when you give a dinner party 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. That’s who’s at the table at this dinner party that he’s surrounded right now by his fellow friends and fellow Pharisees. Probably glancing at each other in disbelief at this point. Why does he say to invite different people? Who does he say to invite? He says, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind. Why? Because they can’t repay you. They can’t give you anything back. Now, what is Jesus saying here? Is he saying that we’re never allowed to have dinner with friends? Well, if that was the case, then there would be no wedding feasts. And he’s already talked about those, right? He says no brothers or relatives also in what he lists out here. So if we take Jesus literally on this point, then Sunday dinner is canceled for you all this afternoon. So clearly Jesus is speaking with hyperbole here to make a point. And Jesus often did that. He would say, gouge out your eye if it causes you to sin. He doesn’t want you to actually gouge your eye, but he wants to make the point, right? If you look down at verse 26, right after the passage we’re looking at today, you will hear Jesus say that you cannot follow him unless you hate everybody in your life, everybody in your family, including yourself. Does he want us to hate all those people? No. It’s hyperbole. It’s a dramatic statement to make a point. What Jesus is saying here once again works at two levels. So on the surface, sin makes us only care about the people who can help us out. It makes us only care about the people who can pay us back and give us power, who can advance our cause. And sin makes it so that we only treat with kindness people who can serve us and give us things that we want. But in the kingdom of God, generosity works very differently. Christian generosity that flows from a heart that’s been transformed by Christ includes people could that could not possibly pay you back. This is why you can measure your own Christian walk. You can measure your own sanctification by asking yourself how much you love people who are hurting and who are in need. James tells us that the type of religious practice God loves is caring for widows and orphans who are in distress. It’s why Israel, over and over again throughout the Old Testament, Israel is God’s people. They are weighed and they are judged by the Lord through the prophets because of their treatment of immigrants and sojourners and the poor. Jesus says, investing your generosity in caring for people who can’t pay you back in any way is an investment of righteousness in the Kingdom of God. That’s why he says repayment comes in the form of a right standing with the Lord on the day of judgment. That statement in verse 14 there is probably a reference to the blessings of eternity. What Jesus elsewhere calls treasures in heaven. But why does the Christian heart have that generosity? Where is that coming from? Why do we have this developing love and care for people who can’t repay us? Well, that’s the other level of Jesus teaching here. It’s the teaching below the surface. Now, again, think about the gospel itself. Think about the gospel message. Jesus died in your place for your sins to set you free for eternity. Can you pay God back for that? Can you pay him back? Of course not. Salvation is entirely a work of God’s grace. It’s a free gift. It’s bought at the highest possible price. There’s no price that’s even imaginable of God giving his own life to secure it. But it comes to us free. If God only invited people into his kingdom, who could repay him, the place would be empty. There’d be nobody in that kingdom. When you’re saved by Jesus, you receive unimaginable generosity. And that generosity transforms your heart. It’s like the compassion. God gives you compassion. You become compassion. God is generous. You become generous. So people can can wail and complain all they want about a lack of generosity in the world. They can talk about rich people exploiting the poor. Laws and and tax cuts favoring those who have a lot at the expense of those who don’t have a lot. No equity. Failed systems. You can blame a lot of things, but if you want real generosity, if that’s what you’re longing for, if you want real generosity, you have to change the heart. That’s where it comes from. The hearts of people must be extraordinarily generous toward people who cannot repay them. That’s how you would get it. And if that’s the sort of world that you’d like to see, I’m telling you, what you’re longing for is the kingdom of God. That’s what your heart longs for. We need hearts that are filled with the generosity of Jesus.

[00:23:53] Let’s look at diversity in the kingdom. Someone at the table heard Jesus say these things, and he said, blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God. See, he knew that Jesus was talking about the kingdom of God. He knew this wasn’t just about dinner etiquette. That’s what all of this has been about. But clearly, this man also thinks that he has a seat at the table in God’s kingdom, and he might. I have no idea. Passage doesn’t say, but Jesus doesn’t want these Pharisees here at the table to make the mistake of thinking that just because they sit in prominent places at the ruler of the Pharisees table, that it’s proof of their inclusion in the kingdom. And so he tells them one last parable. This one is also a dinner party parable, at the dinner part. You can see why I named this sermon the Dinner Party. Uh, a man throws a banquet, throws a banquet, invites lots of people. He gets everything ready. And then he sends his servant out to gather those who had been invited.  They’ve already been invited. They already knew the party was happening. Now the servants going out there to gather them in, let them know that the party is ready. But the people who knew that the party was coming up start making excuses to the servant sent by the host. One man bought a field. He says he needs to go and have a look at it. Another man bought some oxen. He needs to go and examine them so they have business excuses. Another guy married a wife. Wives were apparently in charge of the calendar even in Jesus day. Party? we can’t go to a party. You got to fix the manger this weekend or whatever you had to do. No, actually, in the mosaic law if you got married, a man got married, he would have an entire year where he wouldn’t have to serve the nation at all. They would just get to have a year long honeymoon, which was pretty nice deal, actually. It’s a wedding leave. So they have business excuses. They have pleasure excuses. These guys knew the party was coming, but when the servant arrived to get them, they had all sorts of reasons why they couldn’t go. So the servant reports back to the man. And the man is now called the master of the house if you notice that in verse 21. The master says to the servant, go out and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame. Do you remember that group? Same words, same order. Basically he’s saying, go out and get the people that can’t pay me back. Go out to those people. They can’t pay the master back, but they come. They have no earthly attachments. They have no better offers than nothing to lose. They have everything to gain by coming to this banquet. And when the party is still not full, the master sends the servant out again. And this time he leaves town. He goes out to every conceivable far off place to compel people to come into the master’s banquet. And that’s how the master fills up his banquet. People from everywhere hear the invitation of the master’s servant, and they come to the banquet. Now, if you’ve been tracking, it doesn’t take much to get what Jesus is saying here, does it? This is a thinly veiled metaphor for culturally, socially, racially, socioeconomically diverse kingdom. That God the Father is building through God the Son, his servant messenger. So these guys around the table, if they have ears to hear it, they just heard that they are pushing away the messenger that has come to tell them that the kingdom of God has arrived. The kingdom that they’ve been waiting for has begun. This guy here at the table, who’s talking about how blessed everyone will be in the kingdom of God, had better trust in Jesus. Otherwise he won’t be blessed in the kingdom at all. See, Jesus kingdom isn’t made up of good people from the right background who keep the rules. It’s made up of all people everywhere who are united together in their need for Jesus and in their love of the Lord. So the picture Jesus paints of those in his kingdom, it’s a beautiful mosaic of people from all walks of life. And what they’re doing is they’re eating and they’re celebrating together in harmony. If you push away Jesus like the Pharisees did, you don’t get to experience that. You don’t get to have that harmonious joy. So again, I say to those of you who hope to see racial reconciliation, love for people in distress, care and concern for the poor, camaraderie among different ethnic groups around the world. Your hope is Jesus reality. Your longing is for the kingdom Jesus has established. That’s where it’s happening. The kingdom of God that Jesus describes is representative of all people, from every walk of life in harmony in the presence of the Lord, and there seated at his table with joy. Jesus is building the kingdom of God right now. It’s imperfect. It’s imperfect. There are struggles. We are struggling through sin to see this kingdom expand. But that’s what God is doing. That’s what God is doing across the world through the power of the Holy Spirit. If you say you want unity but you don’t want Jesus, you’re pushing away the very gospel that will give you what you’re looking for. If you say you want Jesus but you don’t want diversity, you don’t love the thing that Jesus loves and your heart needs to change on that.

We’re going to celebrate communion together. What better way to end a dinner party sermon about dinner parties filled with dinner party parables than with the Lord’s Supper. This is the meal that we eat in solidarity with all believers in Jesus across the globe. It’s a picture of our unity in Christ. We eat this to remember what Jesus did to save us and to usher us into the kingdom. We eat this in anticipation of the great banquet that is described at the end of the Book of Revelation, when all God’s people gather with Jesus to celebrate his victory over sin and death. I want to invite our servers to come forward here to the front as the plates are passed take this time to consider your inclusion in God’s Kingdom through the free gift of God’s grace to us in Jesus. If you don’t yet know Jesus, just let the elements pass by you this morning and use this time to think about that invitation from Christ. If you’d like to trust in Jesus this morning and not miss out on this invitation to come in to this kingdom that your heart is longing to see, I would tell you this morning, put your trust in Jesus. Repent of your sin, turn from it and declare that Jesus is your Savior. You can speak directly to him. You don’t need a mediator. You don’t need somebody to go through in order to come to Christ. Talk to the Lord and put your trust in Jesus. You can step boldly into God’s presence without fear if you trust in him. Let’s pray.

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