Meal With A Pharisee, Etc. Series

Jerusalem

Lesson: Meal with a Pharisee Ruler Occasions Healing a Man with Dropsy; Parables of Ox, Best Places, and Great Supper

Luke 14:1-24

Jesus Goes to Dinner at Home of Pharisee

(Luke 14:1) And it came to pass, as he went into the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread on the Sabbath day, that they watched him.

Jesus wasn’t in the dark about why He was invited to this dinner. But I have to admit that if a Pharisee had asked me to come to dinner for the purpose of spying on me, I would have refused. The Pharisee and perhaps others who were there were watching Jesus, and looking for something to use to damage the reputation of our Lord. This verse provides us with the atmosphere of the situation that Jesus was in. It was this prelude before the dinner that produced the tenseness.

(Luke 14:2) And, behold, there was a certain man before him which had the dropsy.

Luke the physician is the only gospel writer to record this healing. Dropsy was literally internalized or excessive water in the tissues, and this is the only mention of it in the New Testament. This Sabbath situation sounds as if it was a trap set up by Jesus’ enemies. No man with this terrible dropsy disease would be invited to supper at the house of a chief Pharisee, let alone sitting right in front of Jesus. Besides the Pharisees invited to their feasts only people who would return the favor, and therefore this handicapped man was the bait in a trap. I believe this man was deliberately planted to motivate our Lord to break the Sabbath by healing him. Notice what He did. The Lord asked the question first, and they were afraid to answer Him.

(Luke 14:3-5) And Jesus answering spake unto the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day? And they held their peace. And he took him, and healed him, and let him go; And answered them, saying, Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the Sabbath day?

The Pharisees refused to answer Jesus’ question, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day?” If they had answered “yes,” they could not condemn Jesus for healing. But if they answered “no,” they would have condemned themselves as indifferent to human suffering. If their ox or donkey fell into something, they would rescue it. In other words, if any of those rascals had had a flat tire on the Sabbath, they would have fixed it, and the Lord knew it.

(Luke 14:6) And they could not answer him again to these things.

Their silence was Christ’s justification. If it was illegal, they should have said so. Thereafter, Christ healed the man. Christ’s final question placed this Sabbath healing in its proper perspective as doing good or rendering help whenever necessary. This incident created a rather tense situation for dinner.

Parable of the Impolite Guests

(Luke 14:7) And he put forth a parable to those which were bidden, when he marked how they chose out the chief rooms; saying unto them,

At the table in that day there were four chief places. Couches rather than chairs were so that the guests reclined at the table. There were three places to recline on each side; the center place was the seat of honor which made four chief places. At the head table there would be seats one, two and three on one side; seat number two, the center seat, would be the seat of honor. Around the other side would be seats four, five and six, with number five as the seat of honor. Around on the other side were seats seven, eight and nine; with seat number eight the seat of honor. On the forth side of the table, seat number eleven would be the seat of honor. They didn’t use place cards back then, so there was probably a rush for the best seats at the table and that is what Jesus noticed and He will comment about it.

(Luke 14:8-10) "When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room; lest a more honourable man than thou be bidden of him; And he that bade thee and him come and say to thee, Give this man place; and thou begin with shame to take the lowest room. But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room; that when he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go up higher: then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them that sit at meat with thee."

The Lord Jesus said, “When you are invited to dinner, don’t rush to get the seat of honor. The host may have someone else in mind for that seat. He would have to come to you and say, ‘Move over to the lowest seat so my guest of honor can set here.’” To get to the lowest seat, all you have to do is move over one seat, but it is embarrassing.