Luke 14

Actually, 14, 14 verses.

So I think we're out of Bibles today, but normally when you come in, we have free Bibles available on the table over here.

I have tons of them.

We just didn't bring enough today.

Luke 14, 1 through 14 looks like this.

And it's up here up here on the screen as well.

On one Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched.

There in front of him was a man suffering from abnormal swelling of his body.

Jesus asked the Pharisee and experts in the law, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?

But they remained silent.

So taking hold of the man, he healed him and sent him on his way.

Then he asked him, If one of you has a child or an ox that falls into the well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out?

And they had nothing to say.

When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honor at the table, he told them this parable.

For a person more distinguished than you may have been invited.

If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, Give this person your seat.

Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place.

But when you're invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, Friend, move up to a better place.

Then you will be honored in the presence of all other guests, for all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humbled themselves will be exalted.

Then Jesus said to his host, When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do you do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors.

If you do, they may invite you back, so you will be repaid.

But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed.

Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the at the resurrection of the righteous.

Let's pray together.

God, we ask for your um that you'd speak into our lives by the text here.

We believe that you wrote these things through Luke and that you can speak to our lives through this teaching.

So, God, would you um interrupt our lives?

You know our stories, you know where we're coming from, and we we pray that this this morning we would encounter you.

Lord, for those that are in pain, those that are suffering, would you work?

Would you make yourself known?

Uh thank you for the food that we were able to share together.

And as we were nourished and fed through that meal, God, I pray that um you would feed us spiritually this morning.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

So um we're gonna go actually go through the entire chapter this morning.

So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna give you just a quick summary of this text and uh pull out some principles and then we'll move on to the next text.

There's there's this big idea that I'm I'm hoping that God will give me the grace to communicate.

As I was just wrestling with this text this week and considering it, I was just struck by um some things that really relate to our culture and that we live in.

Um but but here's some of the prerequisites for understanding this, right?

So Jesus is at a meal in a Jewish setting, not in a Gentile setting, not in Fells Point.

This is not a dinner, you know, at my house.

This is a Jewish culture.

So there's gaps that exist between this story and us.

One of them is a language gap, one's a culture gap, and one's a time gap, right?

So, as students of the Bible, when we come into scripture, we have to try to use good um processes to interpret a passage.

I don't know if you um whether you're a fan of it or not, but have you ever watched CSI on TV?

The CSI is uh the show has been going on for years and years and years, right?

And the way that CSI is designed is there's always some crime that usually happens at the front end, right?

And then you have your CSI investigators that step onto the scene and they begin to process the crime scene.

And the way that the show is formatted is uh designed in a way so that you learn the way that those scientists, those detectives, work.

You learn to appreciate the questions that they ask when they come onto the scene.

And the writers of the show slowly are informing you of the science behind investigations.

And so if you watch enough of those shows, you find yourself saying, oh, they need to run this DNA test, or you know, let's look at the blood splatter, make sure you don't miss that, right?

So you're able to participate in the investigation.

When we come to Scripture, we want to have a set of CSI principles that we apply to Scripture, where we're interpreting the text, right?

Where we're seeking to understand what is it saying.

Once we understand what it's saying, then we take a second step into what does this say to me?

But that's the second step.

It's very important as students of Scripture that we first understand what it's saying.

And there's some prerequisites or presuppositions rather that exist within the text.

So Jesus is assuming a Jewishness about his audience.

And what we're gonna see in a minute is that one of uh the people at this banquet are gonna ask about a future banquet, a kingdom banquet.

So there's this anticipation of eating a meal in God's kingdom.

Now, whether the person who asked this question is asking of a thinking of it being in this lifetime or a future, we don't know, because the kingdom for a Jewish mind was not necessarily related to heaven.

It was this, remember, they they were an earthly kingdom, and they had had these high points of being of reigning over a massive part of the Middle East.

And so, um, but nonetheless, there's this idea of eating with the Messiah, God's Messiah, in this future kingdom.

And then another pre um supposition is the resurrection of the righteous, which Jesus refers to, that there's going to be a resurrection of the righteous and it's something some things that take place at that point.

And then, third, notice that culturally, these people, these Pharisees and Jesus, are eating together in a meaningful way.

So the way that they relate to a meal is possibly different than the way that we eat to a meal.

We ate a meal this morning.

The goal this morning was to get food into your belly.

Culturally, this culture is somewhat similar to other Eastern cultures, like when I lived in in Kenya.

Um, you know, you show up for the meal a couple hours in advance, and it's it's highly relational.

It's not goal-oriented to like, or and it's not related around pleasure, right?

That's those are kind of the two Western relationships that we have with food, which is like, how good does it taste, and um, how fast can I get it in me, right?

But but in this culture where Jesus is at, the meal was significant, it indicated significant things.

Now we have some of that in our culture where there'll be like a banquet and you get dressed up, you know, um to the hilt, and um it has more significance than the meal itself.

But here it's important to understand that the that this eating was definitively meaningful within the culture.

There was value that was being conveyed through this meal.

So, in um, there's an outline that's uh I have a slide for it if you go to the next slide.

This is kind of verses 1 through 14, which we just read.

Jesus is reframing the idea of the Sabbath, which we've covered many times as we've gone through the text, right?

So Jesus hammers the Jews on their code related to the Sabbath.

He clearly felt like the way that they did Sabbath was not in line with God's original purpose for the Sabbath.

So he's trying to reframe it.

The second thing in these verses is that we see those that exalt themselves will be humbled, and those that humble themselves will be exalted, which you're familiar with that paradigm that exists within Scripture.

And the third thing that we encounter is uh to do good to those who cannot repay you because you have a future reward.

So, and then and then we go on to verses 15 through 24, which is um the parable of the great banquet, which we're gonna read in a second, and we see the surprising guests at God's banquet, and then we're gonna close with the cost of being a disciple.

Um it's important to see that this meal that Jesus is at, as he heals this guy who's got this water retention issue of some sort, and then there's a debate over the Sabbath, and then there's a question about where do you sit when you come to the meal, and then Jesus talking about what the invitations, all this material, all this story is happening at an elite dinner.

So while we may not all be Jewish, and at least one of us is, we may not all be Jewish.

There is an ability for us to relate to the idea of the elite gathering for a meal, or the elite gathering uh for a socially significant meeting.

At this time, the elite in Jesus' day were those that were religious leaders, so like the Pharisees in this text, they were in the elite group.

Then you had the wealthy business people of the day, that was another elite group, and then the third group was the Roman leadership or the politicians.

And essentially, this was a dinner party of the religious elite.

In fact, it says that this was a meal with a prominent Pharisee.

They had their protocol, their values, and their pecking order.

So again, you can go back and read through this.

There's a lot there, but it's interesting how Jesus is making a point about the seating arrangements.

Um, I bet if we opened up the floor, you have funny incidents that have occurred in your own life where you either were honored or you presupposed honor and ended up being humiliated.

I was trying to think of something in my life.

Um I've definitely been humiliated at points in my life and made some bad presuppositions or bad assumptions, right, that have ended up being uh causing the humility or humiliation.

But Jesus is really trying to deal with the attitudes of their heart.

So it's important to understand that this teaching is targeted at a group that views itself as the cultural elite.

So he's talking about the seating arrangements and then who you invite.

All of this should address the attitudes of these individuals' hearts.

Let's go to the next section.

I think, Derek, we have slides for it.

I think it's two slides starting in verse 15.

Look back down at the text, read along with me.

It says this 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 of the kingdom of God.

That's the feast I told you about.

Now, look at what Jesus says.

He replies in verse 16 A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests.

At the time of the banquet, he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, Come, for everything is now ready.

But they all alike began to make excuses.

They said, I have been brought, uh I have been bought a field.

I must go and see it.

Please excuse me.

Another said, I have just bought five yoke of oxen, and I am on my way to try them out.

Please excuse me.

Still another said, I got married, so I can't come.

The servant came back and reported this to the master.

Then the owner of the house became angry and ordered the servant, go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.

Sir, the servant said, What you ordered has been done, but there is still room.

Then the master told his servant, Go out to the roads and the country lanes and compel them to come in, so that my house will be full.

I tell you, not one of those who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.

So this whole thing starts, the whole story begins with a guy at the table saying, You know, how blessed are gonna be those who are invited to your feast, right?

We're moving, in fact, go to the next slide.

We're moving from an earthly meal to a heavenly banquet.

So Jesus is in the context of an elite dinner, and now he is gonna move into this story about a heavenly banquet, and the assumption of his audience is that surely they will be there in God's banquet.

Surely they'll be at God's kingdom feast.

And yet Jesus tells this story about this guy that has a banquet, and there's three different groups that throw up their different objections, their different excuses of why they shouldn't, why they're not going to be there.

It's fascinating, isn't it?

And so who does Jesus say, go and compel to bring in?

To the poor and the disabled.

Right?

This is the theme, the recurring theme of God's kingdom, is that the elites, not because God doesn't love them, are they not a part of his kingdom, but they reject God.

Right?

God comes and God says, even to the to the to the to the Jewish nation, he says, I'm here, I'm your Messiah.

I have come to fulfill your um the foundation of the prophets and the law and all of your history is now fulfilled in me.

But they rejected Jesus, and instead what we have is Jesus giving the offer to those that were excluded originally.

It's surprising, right?

There's a shock of value in this parable.

And it goes in, we go into it with this assumption that you know surely us elite are going to be at this meal, but then it turns out no, the ones that are actually going to attend are the poor and the disabled.

Should encourage you.

If you're would number yourself amongst the poor or the disabled, this passage should encourage you.

That that God's at God's feast, at when God has a meal prepared for us, God's kingdom, you're you are the welcome party, right?

You're the welcome party.

You may be the outcast in culture, you may feel like second-class citizens, but in God's kingdom, the invitation is extended to you.

Let's look at the verse 25 through 35.

25 through 35.

I want you to be familiar with the text, and then we're going to spend some time just um thinking through this.

Large crowds were traveling with Jesus.

This is verse 25.

Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them, he said, If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife, children, brothers and sisters, yes, even their own life, such a person cannot be my disciple.

And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

Suppose one of you wants to build a tower, won't you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?

For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying, This person began to build and wasn't able to finish.

Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king, won't he first sit down and consider whether he is able with the ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand?

If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off, and will ask for terms of peace.

In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything, you have you cannot be my disciples.

Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?

It is fit neither for the soil nor the manure pile.

It is thrown out.

Whoever has ears, let them hear.

So, the cost of discipleship.

We we we covered similar material in chapter nine.

If you want to go back to chapter nine, Jesus has already said this.

In fact, in the transition into this season of Jesus going up to Jerusalem, he's hammering these principles of discipleship that Jesus needs to be the number one priority.

And the reason why he's saying this is because not to discourage his followers, he's not just trying to discourage you from following Jesus.

What he's trying to say is you need to count the c the cost in advance and make a determination that you're in, right?

That you are committed.

Man, doesn't that speak to our culture, right?

We live in a in a culture, in a time where commitment and steadfastness over a long period of time is a rare thing, right?

I was thinking this week about even just this neighborhood.

And there's a turnover of residents in this neighborhood by at be somewhere between a tenth and a fifth every year.

Um people come in, they work here, they're working at Hopkins, or they're working at Under Armour, you know, or they're working in the financial district, or whatever, you know, they're down here.

And uh they'll do a few years and then there's a turnover.

Um stability, you know, is a is a rare thing.

And Jesus is speaking to those who would potentially be his followers and saying, you've got to be ready to make me number one in your life.

You've got to be ready to follow me absolutely.

So if if your concept or your um understanding of Christianity is is the same idea of like clicking the thumbs up button on a Facebook page, then then your your perceptive is too low, right?

Jesus is uh asking for you to fully commit, to follow him.

Um and that and he is saying that he is going to affect every aspect of your life.

So let's let's look at just for a second.

As I was looking at this text, I was thinking, like, you know, culturally, this is not us.

Like, we're not eating with the Pharisees, right?

The these social structures don't exist anymore.

But there's still the idea of the elites and those that are like elite within a subculture.

And maybe you can identify with a subculture.

Maybe you yourself feel like, you know, I'm a part of this group.

Maybe it's like an ethnicity, or or maybe it's a um hobby, um, maybe it's some kind of group that you really draw your identity from, that you're making comparisons between yourself and that that that is very possible.

Um, maybe it's something that has to do with wealth or beauty, influence, purpose, reward.

But um the more I was thinking about this passage and like who's the elite of our day?

Like who's the elite today?

Like we would often say, well, there's the political elites, there's there's in there's definitely influencers that are within our culture.

I mean, there's there's within marketing, there's influence marketing.

It's like you have like 50,000 um Instagram friends, I'll pay you to put up a post for me, you know, I'll pay you 500 bucks or whatever.

That's that's like because you have influence, you have people's um attention.

But you know, as I was wrestling with this idea of like the elites, um, well, first of all, my attitude towards the Pharisees is pretty condescending, right?

When you read this text and you see Jesus correcting the Pharisees, do you find yourself going, yeah, Jesus, give it to those Pharisees?

Right?

That that's kind of how I feel.

I feel like, yeah, Jesus is doing a good job correcting them.

But but track with me here.

What does it look like?

Who who is the elite class within society?

I I would suggest this there is a lot of individualism within our culture.

Just even thinking about um I'm an old millennial, so I'm not speaking um against a group that I am not, but thinking About like professional millennials that live in the neighborhood here, Fells Point, Harbor East.

In my conversations with that particular group, that group is so detached from the actual neighborhood, they they're not deriving their meaning from geography at all.

Their subculture has nothing to do with geography, or very little to do with that.

Now they may go to the gym, they may have a running club, but but very few people nowadays would derive their identity, a certain certain group would not derive their identity from their geographic location and say, yes, this is my neighborhood, right?

These are my people.

Instead, we have local residents here who are excarnate.

Do you know what excarnate is?

Well, do you know what incarnate is?

Incarnate is a word that we use related to Jesus, right?

That Jesus incarnated himself, which means he took on flesh, he was spirit, he took on flesh, came into the world with a body, he became present in our midst.

We live in a culture that is what we would say excarnate, that's putting off the body, putting off the flesh, detaching itself from its surrounding.

Their relationship, whoever they are, has nothing to do with their neighborhood.

In fact, their relationship with the neighborhood, like go on Patterson Park Facebook group, for example, or Butchers Hill Facebook group, a lot of the posts there are a demand for the neighborhood to become useful to them, to me.

Like it needs to be useful to me, it needs to serve my purposes.

Rather than finding an identity in the local community, it's more I want to share my cons my individualistic concern about how it's it's hampering the freedom for self-expression in the neighborhood.

Not everything, but a good bit.

Obviously, the internet has made this so much more possible.

No longer does my neighborhood matter.

Instead, I can go and find people who have a shared interest with me online.

Right?

So rather than being face-to-face, I can I can find my group here.

I can have a conversation with my subculture here.

Less and less meaning or identity is derived from the neighborhood.

So this may seem like a wild goose chase, but again, it's rooted in the question: who are the elites?

Who are the elites of the day?

There's a guy named Michael Frost who really fleshes out this idea.

I have the quote here that if you could put it up on the screen, uh, next slide.

He says this whereas Jesus Christ was God incarnate and his church was called uh to an incarnational lifestyle, today we find ourselves drifting towards excarnation, the defleshing of our faith.

We have been moving through a disembodying process that has left us feeling rootless and disengaged, connected to our world more and more through screens rather than face to face.

Isn't that interesting?

He goes on to say a perfect example of this is the airport lobby.

Not all of you have been necessarily on a plane or to the airport, but if you've been to an airport lobby, you know that it is uh very dehumanizing.

It's ugly oftentimes, sterile, uncomfortable.

They make it so that nowadays you can't sleep on the chairs very easily.

And nobody's talking, right?

People have their earbuds in, people have their heads down.

It's an excarnate, it's a non-human environment.

Um I I really his book um I would recommend this book highly, but he goes on to talk about that movie that um is it Richard Greer?

No, it's not Richard Greer.

Who's the other really handsome guy that was single for a long time and he got married to the lady with the black hair?

He was single for like a long time.

George Clooney, yes.

George Clooney does a movie about where he's like the professional guy that goes around and uh he fires people.

I think it's rated R.

What's that up in the air?

Is that what it's called?

Up in the air, right?

And so the whole premise of the story is the guy has no personal life, right?

He's just moving and he's moving through airplanes, right?

The pride of his life is that he is completely disconnected from humanity.

His relationship to sex and women is just like just using people, right?

It is, and it's a perfect like um extrapolation of this idea of defleshing or or being excarnate.

So it's important, this is an important observation.

So again, who are the elites in our culture?

Who are the elites?

I would suggest this is who they are.

I would suggest, and if I was gonna name this sermon, I would call it party of one.

I think that we're elite to ourselves in our culture.

I think that we are the elite individually.

I think we're elite unto ourselves.

We become so individualistic that our our subculture is really just us.

I think that it is uh it's what our culture celebrates uh when it talks about self-expression.

I can jump out of my world momentarily and appreciate your self-expression and then jump back into my world.

And social media is kind of a huge contributor to this way of thinking.

We we look at how many friends have we communic uh accumulated, how many likes have we gotten onto a post.

But but notice like even with social media, we don't measure our success or our engagement levels on social media based off of our group's engagement, like, hey, our group got this many likes, right?

No, we look at how many posts, how many likes did my Instagram picture get, right?

So individualistic.

Go to the next slide.

This is what Keller says.

Tim Keller's a pastor up in um New York City.

Um he says this in traditional cultures, the heroic narrative is self-sacrifice.

You are your duties, and your self-worth depends on the honor that is bestowed upon you by your community for discharging those duties or them.

In Western cultures, the new heroic narrative is self-assertion.

You are your individual dreams and desires, and your self-worth depends on the dignity you bestow on yourself because you have asserted your dreams and desires regardless of the opposition you may have had from the community.

We live in a culture where we are the elite.

And so remember how we were looking down our nose at these Pharisees?

Well, hold on just a second.

We may flip the coin on this a bit.

First of all, notice the framework that Jesus is giving is that his kingdom happens in community.

As Jesus is giving these instructions to the Pharisees, he's talking about something that can only happen within a community.

He's talking about, yeah, keep having your dinners, but change who's invited.

Keep having your dinners, but rearrange the seating, the seating that's there.

You see, as Jesus is talking about his value system, the values of the kingdom, you cannot do what Jesus is saying without the idea of relationship.

Those of us who I think everybody in this room, those of us just in this culture of self-expression and autonomy, there's two steps, actually probably three, involved in the application of this passage.

I I don't think I put this, see if there's a slide.

Go to the next slide.

No, it's not.

Go back.

Um there's three steps, right?

So in order to get where Jesus wants us to be at, there's three steps that have to happen.

Right?

The first step is that you have to value your body.

You have to recognize that God gave you a body.

Do you see that you cannot do what this is kind of like the pre-step.

Before you can step back into community, you have to first recognize that you can't be in community without a body.

God didn't make you a disembodied spirit, he gave you a body.

And and unfortunately, unfortunately, within Western Christianity, there's sometimes this mistake of defleshing ourselves, of making this priority on the spirit, but not recognizing that the body is what God gave you.

You cannot do what God has called you to do without a body.

Your body is important.

That's the first thing, just to mentally grab a hold of.

Second thing, you need to take your body and abandon self-expression and be a part of one another, be a part of community.

Step back into relationships.

Recognize that the screen in front of you is not an adequate substitute for the community that God has called you into.

And then the third step, which is the only step the Pharisees needed to take, was that you need to be humble and invite the humble to the party.

You need to be humble in community and then you need to invite the humble to the party.

You see that?

So we started out looking down our nose at these Pharisees, but actually they're like two steps closer than we are in our culture.

We're a culture that's got to embrace and understand from God why our body is important.

And second, we have to step away from this defleshing, step away from excarnate and be incarnate in our community.

Last of all, I just want to say this.

If, as you as you see this, um the the whole message closes off with Jesus talking about the cost of discipleship.

This is so counter-cultural, right?

I mean, it's it's it is so um, first of all, it's a death to self to say that I'm going to place myself in face-to-face relationships in community rather than letting my community come from my phone, right?

That's costly.

It's harder, it's more painful.

You subject yourself to more things that could hurt.

Um, but it's also what God is calling us to do.

It's it's what God's kingdom is about.

I don't know if you know this.

Might be shocking, but there's no Apple store in heaven.

Boost Mobile doesn't work up there.

We're gonna be, we're gonna get a new body, right?

We're gonna get a new body, and we're gonna be in the community of the saints, right?

The body is important, right?

You lose this one, but you get a new one.

You don't become a disembodied spirit.

You get a new body.

Your body is important.

And so, do you remember when what Jesus said in Hebrews?

He says, A body thou hast prepared for me.

He knew Jesus was on a mission.

He knew that the Father had a purpose for him, a direction he was heading.

And he knew that the body that God had that the Father had given him was essential to the fulfillment of the mission.

Now, if you're with us and you are the poor or you're the disabled, know this, know this, that you're the invited guest to the party.

You're the invited guest.

This morning we forgot a couple things at the uh at the compassion center for the meal.

It was great because I got to drive around and pick up my buddies, you know, that I love, you know, my friends that are they're down and out, right?

They they don't necessarily sleep on the streets, right?

They're not out.

Those, and and as I was doing that, it's like my honor to have those relationships and to run be able to run into people on the street and they know me and I can invite them over for food.

Thank you, Joe, and the team that helped with that.

No, you're the invited guest.

You know, I love this passage because it it's the picture of our church.

The church that we're forming, that God's forming here in Fells Point, is a church that's socioeconomically diverse, that both the wealthy are invited in and those that are um outcast, societal outcasts, are welcome in into God's kingdom.

Jesus paid for you to be a part and to be a part of the family of God.

Let's pray.

God, thank you for just your love and your mercy that you give to us.

And the humility that's described in this passage, would you author that humility in our lives by the Holy Spirit?

Lord, where we um love ourselves and care about ourselves, um, forgive us.

Lord, help us to be dependent upon you.

Even just listening to one of my friends this morning who he himself doesn't, he lives, he slept on the street last night, but just hearing him talk about the care that he showed to someone else in need.

Um Lord, I I want to be like that.

I want to be like my homeless brother that that cares for others.

Um and yet, Lord, we live in a culture that that cares about status and status symbols.

So, Lord, you work in us by your spirit, and we just want to surrender to you.

We want to let you deal with our hearts.

God, we pray for this week.

We ask that you would bear fruit through us.

We we cannot be a fruitful people without um our relationship with you.

And so, Lord, maintain that with us.

Lord, make our relationship with you healthy.

Feed us by your word.

Lord, bless our times of prayer and speak into us.

Lord, protect us from the devil.

We pray.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.