Dining with Pharisees on the Sabbath Luke 14 (pt 6)

¹² [Jesus] also said to the one who had invited him, “When you give a lunch or a dinner, don’t invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors, because they might invite you back, and you would be repaid. ¹³ On the contrary, when you host a banquet, invite those who are poor, maimed, lame, or blind. ¹⁴ And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you; for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

¹⁵ When one of those who reclined at the table with him heard these things, he said to him, “Blessed is the one who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!”

¹⁶ Then he told him: “A man was giving a large banquet and invited many. ¹⁷ At the time of the banquet, he sent his servant to tell those who were invited, ‘Come, because everything is now ready.’

^18 “But without exception they all began to make excuses. The first one said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. I ask you to excuse me.’

^19 “Another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I’m going to try them out. I ask you to excuse me.’

^{20 “}And another said, ‘I just got married, and therefore I’m unable to come.’

^21 “So the servant came back and reported these things to his master. Then in anger, the master of the house told his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the city, and bring in here the poor, maimed, blind, and lame.’

^22 “‘Master,’ the servant said, ‘what you ordered has been done, and there’s still room.’

²³ “Then the master told the servant, ‘Go out into the highways and hedges and make them come in, so that my house may be filled. ²⁴ For I tell you, not one of those people who were invited will enjoy my banquet.’” Luke 14:1-24

As Jesus is speaking with the Pharisees in Luke 14, He tells a story that must shape our understanding of what the Bible calls predestination. Notice, first of all, in verse 18, “…without exception, they all began to make excuses.” Who made excuses? Everyone who was invited. They all had an excuse for why they couldn’t come. Here’s a wedding feast, they’re all invited, and they all say no.

This is a picture of the human heart. This is what’s wrong with us. Our natural response in our unregenerate state is to say to God, “Leave me alone! I don’t need you. I’d rather be in charge. I want to do things my way. I’ll be my own boss, thanks very much.” That’s our nature, our sin nature. It’s rotten, it’s terrible and it is pervasive. All of us in our natural state say “no” to God. John 3 says, “The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil.”

So Jesus talks about the host compelling people that normally would not be the ones you’d choose to invite: the poor, the lame, the blind, compelling them to come in.

I often hear folks say, “Well, I just thank God He’s a gentleman! He’s never gonna make you respond. You know, He just sets the gospel out there and those who receive it, they’re saved and those who don’t, you know, well, they’re lost.”

If that’s all there was to it, we’d all be lost.

Do you know why I got saved when I was a preschooler? Because God reached down and woke me up and put the truth in my heart and mind so that I responded by His grace to His kind invitation. God saved me as a preschooler because that was His plan, not because I was smarter than somebody else, not because I was more virtuous than someone else. It was God’s sovereign plan to reach down at that point and save me. And He did. He deserves all the praise, not most of the praise, all the praise! It’s God’s mercy that I was saved as a preschooler. It’s God’s mercy that any of us ever get saved. And so those of us, who have been saved, have an awareness that we weren’t seeking for God. We were running from him. We were going the other way. Our response to truth was either hostility or a yawn. The doctrine of predestination is about God graciously doing something extraordinary, extra special, in order to demonstrate His grace. It is God reaching down and taking away the heart of stone and giving us a heart of flesh. It is God taking the blinders off of our eyes. It is “by His grace that we are saved through faith.” It’s by His grace! It’s “not of ourselves, not a result of works, lest any man should boast.” We were dead in trespasses and sins. We weren’t just sick. Jesus used the metaphor the sick need the physician. Well, scripture doesn’t just leave us there.

How sick were we? Well, frankly, dead. “Okay, you mean like metaphorically dead?” No, “dead!” We were dead in trespasses and sins. We were slaves to sin. We were the subjects of the kingdom of darkness. We were held captive by the enemy. We were blind. We were lost. We were, the Bible says, without hope. That was our condition. And it is God’s grace that reached down and rescued us. It’s only because of His grace that we’re saved. And so, the doctrine of God’s election is not: “Well, yes. I’m one of the elect. I think it was my smile that caused God to say, ‘I’ll save him.’” No, if you want to have a clue what God was looking for when he was choosing who to save, 1 Corinthians tells us that God deliberately chose the nobodies in order to shame the folks who thought they were somebody. That’s what 1 Corinthians tells us: Brothers and sisters, consider your calling: Not many were wise from a human perspective, not many powerful, not many of noble birth. One of the Queens of England said, “I was saved by the letter M.” She said, “Thank God, it says not many rather than not any.” Because the good news is God can save kings and queens and potentates. God can save the rich, God can save the smart. But in case you haven’t noticed, that’s not who most of us are. God deliberately chose the ones the world wouldn’t. So if we try to build our ministry, or our fellowship, or our identity around how many Beauty Queens in the midst, how many CEOs in the group, then we’re going about it all wrong. You can build a ministry of sorts that way. Well, is it wrong to have a ministry to CEOs? Not at all! It’s needed. It’s wonderful. Somebody needs to talk to those folks. But don’t think that that’s typical of the family of God.

Some folks start walling themselves into little cells thinking, “Somebody else needs to minister to the plebes. I think my calling is just to fellowship with the elite. I am better suited to hang out with them because I enjoy their company more than the poor.” Don’t count on Jesus to join your club.

Jesus said, if we’re going to be dining with Him long term, we better be ready to spend eternity with the people that most of us would not have put on the invitation list in this life. You shouldn’t be expecting all the music in heaven to be exactly what you’re used to, okay? Don’t think the only folks in heaven are going to be the folks who live in your gated neighborhood. You better not be expecting that you can spend this life living the cloistered, insulated, protected existence that many evangelicals desire and seek, and then feel at home when you get to glory. If you want to be getting ready for heaven, you need to be investing your life now in folks who can’t pay you back.