Life Project Blog

Luke 14:15-24

We left off earlier with the reaction of one of the guests at the Pharisee’s house where Jesus had been speaking to them about the Sabbath and the Kingdom after He had healed a man right in front of them on that Sabbath day. As you will recall, it would seem that none of these great men had much to say that day until after Jesus gave them some social advice in 14:7-14:

When one of those at the table with him heard this, he said to Jesus, “Blessed is the one who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God.” (14:15)

As you can see, verse 15 is the transition between the last part and the Great Banquet parable. In this parable, a man puts on a large banquet for many guests. When the banquet is about ready, he sends his servant to let the invited participants know the time has come, but in the three examples we have in the parable, each guest has a lame excuse. The first must rush out to see some property he has just purchased; it would seem he bought real estate sight unseen. The second invitee needed to try out a new team of oxen he has recently purchased, and the third says he must stay home because he’s a newlywed.

Seriously?

The host is not at all pleased, and sends his servant out to invite the poor in the town; they come gladly, but there is still room, so he sends the servant back out to the highways and byways to invite all comers, for he is determined that none who have rejected his generosity will taste of his banquet.

Consider the scene in which this parable was given: Jesus is dining in the home of a Pharisee on the Sabbath. The other guests are Pharisees and teachers of the law, and they have set Him up by having a man present who was in need of healing; they wanted an excuse to accuse Jesus of a violation and Jesus obliged them. Then He gave His explanation asking if they would not save their ox or child if either had fallen into a well on the Sabbath and they had nothing to say to that. Then He told two brief parables about banquets, one dealing with the place of honor, humility and the first being last and the last being first, and then about the blessings of inviting people to their tables who could not repay them with a return invitation, and now this one.

When we look at it in context, we can easily see that the ones Jesus was speaking to were the ones who gave lame excuses at the last minute to the Great Banquet, and that the Great Banquet is the Kingdom of God, and that God is the host. Jesus was in their midst proclaiming that the Kingdom was at hand; they were the ones with the lame excuses like “let’s see if He will heal someone on the Sabbath so we can accuse Him!”

Such great men of high position would never taste God’s banquet, but those who were poor and outcast, even Gentiles, would receive God’s invitation with gladness.

I wonder what the guy who had spoken up in verse 15 was thinking at that moment…

Luke 14:1-15

I wonder if we can see Jesus pleading with the guests of this Pharisee to hear His Kingdom message in this scene. Oh, don’t look for melodrama, for tears and dramatics as you might find in a bad movie, Jesus was much more matter of fact than that. As the scene opens we quickly see that Jesus has been set up: There in the room is a man who was seriously ill and the Pharisees and teachers of the law who were present were watching carefully to see if Jesus would take the bait. Jesus asked them for their legal opinion about healing on the Sabbath, but it seem that they were uncharacteristically silent,

Jesus made sure they saw Him heal the man.

Jesus sent the man on his way and then asked them another question: I f they had a child or an ox that fell into a well on the Sabbath, wouldn’t they rescue them? Again, those men who talk so often and so loudly were silent as the grave.

The party moves to the dining room, and each carefully picks a seat at the table. Jesus notices how they carefully choose their seats according to their rank or honor by protocol for such occasions, and sees an opportunity. He gives some interesting advice in a little parable:

He tells them that they shouldn’t choose a seat of honor, for if they do, their host may have to ask them to move to another seat. By that time, only the “lowest” seat will be available, and they will look foolish in front of everyone. Instead, they should choose the least seat and their host will move them to a better one, and they will be exalted in front of their friends; good social advice, but apparently they all had just gone through this little ritual. Then came the punch line:

For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” (14:11)

Ah yes, I suspect that these men who seldom missed the chance to lord their positions over others caught His drift. For us, He has explained what He means by having said to the disciples that the first will be last and the last will be first in the Kingdom.

With a full head of steam now, Jesus has some more social advice: When giving a luncheon or a dinner party, don’t invite your friends and family, for if you do, they will return the invitation and invite you to their homes as a sort of “payback”. You will then be “even”. Instead, invite the poor, who are in no position to return the favor, and you will find yourself repaid at the resurrection; you will be first in the Kingdom. At this point in the proceedings, it would appear that someone found his voice:

When one of those at the table with him heard this, he said to Jesus, “Blessed is the one who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God.” (14:15)

Was Jesus beginning to reach them?

Maybe. We’ll see what happens next as the scene wraps up in the next passage.

At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, “Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.”

He replied, “Go tell that fox, ‘I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.’ In any case, I must press on today and tomorrow and the next day—for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

Luke 13:31-35

There are a few things in this text that I’m going to let others speculate and debate so that we can focus on a larger theme here without running the word count through the roof. I will point them out to you as we go however. The first is at the very beginning; some Pharisees warned Jesus to get out of there because old Herod was after Him. That seems odd for weren’t the Pharisees plotting to kill Jesus weren’t they working with the Herodians in this effort? Or were these particular Pharisees secretly in Jesus’ corner… or all of the above? For our purposes we’ll just say this issue is unclear, and others can discuss it. Jesus now replies to their warning…

Jesus is defiant in His reply (13:32-33); He will go ahead as planned, and they can relay the message right to Herod if they want to. What these Pharisees cannot know is that Jesus has every reason to be confident, for Herod will never be able to stop God’s eternal purpose from working out at the appointed hour. Indeed, “no prophet can die outside Jerusalem”.

We now reach our destination; verses 34-35. Again, there is something you can argue about because Matthew places this quote in a different location entirely (see Matt. 23:37-39). For our purposes I’ll just say don’t worry about it; the message is the same.

Jesus is headed for Jerusalem where His Ministry will come to its climax. Like the prophets before Him, He will give His life there in God’s service, yet there is a significant difference between His approaching death and the deaths of the prophets of old, for His will be the last sacrifice of the old covenant, the sacrifice that ends atonement for good. I say this because the sacrifices of the Temple were atoning sacrifices; they put off the payment of the penalty for sins until a future date; that is why they were done with animals. Jesus’ sacrifice was the payment itself, and that’s why it was done by the Son of God; fulfilling God’s promise to Abraham. To put it another way, every time the priests performed the sacrificial rites, their sacrifice pictured God’s promise of ultimate redemption; each pointed to what Christ would ultimately do to end the process and take sin away completely.

Yes, each of these was a picture of how much God loved His people. Jesus loved His people so much that He was headed to the city to give His life willingly for their salvation.

His words in 13:34-35 demonstrate that their constant refusal to draw close to God in faith had broken God’s heart. Look carefully! Israel had been looking forward so eagerly to the coming of Messiah, but God was even more eager for the day to dawn.

We’ve seen quite a few warnings in the last several passages of Luke’s narrative and some of them sound a bit harsh when taken verse by verse. Now look back at them and you can see that Jesus isn’t giving warnings through clenched teeth as someone might give a threat. No sir, He was pleading with them to hear His message and receive it in faith, for God wants no one to perish.

There are still many adventures to come before Jesus’ work is complete, and Chapter 14 opens with Jesus visiting, of all things, another Pharisee.

Luke 13:22-30

There is a change of scene; Jesus is no longer in the synagogue, but has been out preaching the Kingdom from town to town. Someone asks Him if only a few people will be saved. That’s an interesting question, isn’t it? Yet often when I have taught about Jesus’ teachings, I have had people, either in comments here or in class discussions in the past observe that the contrast Jesus continually draws between “citizens” of the Kingdom and “citizens” of this world is so stark, so hard, so seemingly impossible that nobody can live up to the standards He set. When I get this question, I find a little comfort in the fact that it wasn’t just my poor teaching of these things that has led to that concern.

What we must not forget in considering Jesus’ teachings is that God’s grace makes everything possible. To those who heard Him teach these things, there was Grace Incarnate there before them, but He had not yet completed the task of making grace available to everyone who will have it, but in our time, His grace is right there for the asking. I’d say that’s a fairly important fact to bear in mind.

Jesus tells a parable, although not everyone sees it that way, for reasons that elude me. It is the parable of the narrow door (13: 24 ff.) which contains some interesting apocalyptic elements. Notice first that the usual character (a man, a farmer etc.) has been replaced with “you”. This is probably what throws people off here; Jesus didn’t mean the specific person who asked the question, it’s the generic you. Then we meet the “owner of the house” which refers to God.; the house is the Kingdom. When the appointed time comes, He will “close the door”. Yes, it is true that this can refer to the Second Coming and final judgment, but for the overwhelming majority of people, it will happen for them when they die, for there will be no further opportunity to repent. After that, there are no appeals (13:27).

In verse 28 we have more apocalyptic elements: “weeping” and “gnashing of teeth” are nearly always indicative of God’s judgment. “Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all of the prophets” is a reference to the faithful component from Old Testament Israel who will be in the Kingdom. “People from east and west and north and south” refers to the full number of the redeemed who will be present in the Kingdom, and the “banquet” is the consummation of the Kingdom, which is to say eternity with the Lord where the first will be last and the last will be first.

Notice that these elements reveal to us that millions, a vast number of the redeemed are involved here, so that the answer to the question that was asked would be that no, many many will be saved. Therefore put your faith and trust in God’s grace and you will be in their number. Yet, should you decide to put it off until another day, your time might run out; and we wouldn’t want that, would we?

I’m sure that you will agree with me that there have been a lot of warnings in this chapter, but don’t get the idea that Jesus is just fine with having to keep anyone out of the Kingdom. As we see in the next passage, this likelihood grieves Him greatly.

Then Jesus asked, “What is the kingdom of God like? What shall I compare it to? It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds perched in its branches.”

Again he asked, “What shall I compare the kingdom of God to? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.”

Luke 13:18-21

Jesus went to synagogue on that Sabbath day where He healed the crippled woman. When the synagogue leader rebuked Him for healing her on the Sabbath day, He made the synagogue leaders look like the hypocrites they were, humiliating them before their congregation and then says to the congregation, “What is the kingdom of God like? What shall I compare it to?”

One must admit that there wasn’t much of a transition between dressing down the synagogue leaders and then asking a couple of rhetorical questions that have nothing whatsoever to do with anything that has been going on. I would imagine that heads were spinning on that fine day…

So were the people still delighted, or were they confused?

Maybe I’m the one who is confused!

He gives two short mini-parables: First, a man plants a tiny mustard seed in his garden that grew into such a large bush or tree even, that birds could perch in its branches; so tiny became so large. Second, a woman put some yeast into a whole lot of flour, and the yeast grew throughout the flour so that it could be made into a great deal of bread.

Yes, the Kingdom is just like that!

In both cases, something that is comparatively small, tiny in fact grows into something surprisingly large; and that is what the kingdom of God is like. On that Sabbath Jesus went to the synagogue in the town of… well I guess Luke didn’t bother to mention the name of the town. While there, He healed a crippled woman whose name was… well I guess that really isn’t all that important for us to know. He was rebuked by the synagogue leader named… I guess it doesn’t matter what his name was, and then Jesus exposed the sheer hypocrisy of their traditions and in the process planted a tiny little seed.

Two thousand years later, we are still reading about this minor event involving unnamed people in a nowhere place, a story that has been read and studied by billions of people.

My how that tiny little seed has grown!

Luke 13:10-17

In this passage, Jesus manages to infuriate the religious establishment of His day, and believe it or not, He didn’t even have a Twitter account. He did it simply by going to synagogue on the Sabbath, as any good Jew would do. When He was there, He saw a woman crippled by a demon for some 18 years, and then… He called up front so everyone could see Him heal her affliction.

Did I mention it was the Sabbath?

In doing this, He stuck His finger right in the eye of their customs, and they didn’t like it one bit. The synagogue leader points out that He can heal six days a week, but not on the seventh, which if you think about it, isn’t all that unreasonable, at least on the surface. Sadly, the religious leaders never got much further into anything than the surface.

Jesus replied to this by pointing out that they wouldn’t think of keeping their animals tied up for the whole day, and neither would God have His child tied up by Satan on the Sabbath; He had set her free. As Luke points out, they were humiliated, and rightly so, for their reasonable argument had been exposed as purely idiotic.

The people were delighted.

As relevant as this exposé of their ridiculous tradition was, there was a larger lesson in all of this, for Jesus has been in the process of demonstrating to His disciples the distinction between their religious leaders and their traditions, and what it means to be a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven. In this little episode, He has shown them that God does not care for our forms and religious traditions, for these are the inventions of men. Rather, God cares for our souls, and in His view, there is no legitimate reason for anyone being bound by the devil in any such form of religion: They must be set free.

Jesus had come to set everyone free from slavery to sin, death and the oppression of this world, and He did not care what the reaction of the religious establishment would be to His actions; “do not worry about such things”.