When Jesus Comes To Dinner Series

When Jesus Comes to Dinner

Series: Encountering Jesus (through the Gospel of Luke)

Brad Bailey - October 13, 2019

Series #42 / Luke 14:1-14

Intro

As we continue in our extended focus on Encountering Jesus in the Gospel of Luke…we have come to this point in which Jesus is speaking into what the coming kingdom is really about … the change that it brings to life.

He sees a world of lives…that are desperately seeking to find their worth…their value. Part of this seeking importance...is through our association with those who we attach importance to. We seek association with those who we deem important… because it makes us feel better.

It’s part of what sociologists refer to as transactional relationships…which is simply a way to describe how nearly all our ways of relating to one another can be reduced to what each gain from the transaction.

And apart from God…our lives are bound in this transactional cage…

We tend to honor and value those who serve our own sense of value. And by nature….we will find ourselves in a world in the vanity of little demi-gods trying to barter our value. [1]

Today Jesus speaks of a different way. In life reconciled with God… there is freedom.

(Pray)

Let’s engage our text… which we will do in three parts…

Luke 14:1-6 (NLT2) ?1  One Sabbath day Jesus went to eat dinner in the home of a leader of the Pharisees, and the people were watching him closely. 2  There was a man there whose arms and legs were swollen. 3  Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in religious law, “Is it permitted in the law to heal people on the Sabbath day, or not?” 4  When they refused to answer, Jesus touched the sick man and healed him and sent him away. 5  Then he turned to them and said, “Which of you doesn’t work on the Sabbath? If your son or your cow falls into a pit, don’t you rush to get him out?” 6  Again they could not answer.

Here we have a scene in which Jesus is invited to dinner.

I can’t help but think of the plaques that are made to hang in homes…that say something like: “Jesus is welcome here”…or “Jesus is the head of this home, the silent listener to every conversation, the unseen guest at every meal?”

How we rightly welcome his presence… but here we are reminded…that it is a transforming presence…that his presence brings a God-centered reality… the way things should be and ultimately are.

His presence always bears love…but the love bears change.

And the table is the very nature of what he transforms.

The table is not only the place we say grace…but the place we define grace… by the way we see and include others. [2]

It was the Sabbath day and perhaps Jesus had been the special guest preacher in the local synagogue. One of the prominent members…. a Pharisee… invited Jesus home to Sabbath dinner.

Most of the guests were probably Pharisees, we would today classify as “good, church going folks,” they undoubtedly thought of themselves as “spiritual and moral folks” ….but they represented the type of religious nature that Jesus confronted…and called out.

What we know is that there was a man with a difficult physical condition. “…a man there whose arms and legs were swollen.” This was called “dropsy” as seen in many other translations…(also called edema) was a painful condition in which because of kidney trouble, a heart ailment, or liver disease, the tissues fill with water.

Once again, it appears that the motive of inviting Jesus may have been to watch him. (Old saying: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”) Many even believe that what is described was clearly alluding to a plan to trap Jesus.

Would he dare minister to someone in need on the Sabbath…a day God declared that people were to rest.

Here is the irony here that lives on…they have put Jesus at the center so they could scrutinize him…. trap him…dismiss him…but it is they who must face the light he brings to bear. (Could build on this…there is a point in which our critical nature must also give way to that which shines on us.)

The nature of God confronts the nature of man.

Two questions… each pierce through vanity of the way things were being shaped.

The first… pierces through their presumption about their tradition representing God.

Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in religious law, “Is it permitted in the law to heal people on the Sabbath day, or not?”

What is Jesus asking… drawing out? There is what God had actually set forth for the people…and then there are traditions that had been laid upon that. Jesus was making it clear…that the law given to and through Moses did NOT forbid healing someone or helping someone in this way.