34. Who is Jesus?
May 01st, 2010
Dinner with Jesus
We are back in our series through Luke looking at the life and mission of Jesus. Last week we had a great Easter service, record attendance. Just when you thought it was safe to get back in the Gospels we are going to see more religious people. Jesus comes to earth to carry out the mission of God. He comes to heal, to restore, to perform miracles, and to prepare us for the coming of the kingdom of God. Every step of the way the religious people oppose Him. All throughout the Gospel of Luke we see that Jesus doing the work of God and the religious people fighting against Him. These guys never seem to learn. It all starts when Jesus is invited to the house of Pharisee for dinner.
Luke 14:1. This is the last of three times we see Jesus having a meal with a Pharisee. The first two meals Jesus has just laid these guys out shaming them for the hypocrisy and lack of compassion. We define insanity as doing the same thing and expecting different results, so these guys are insane. They keep trying to corner Jesus. They keep trying to catch Him doing something wrong and every time they try it blows up in their face. You would think: intelligent, well educated people would learn to stop picking fights with Jesus when they lose every time.
This is cool though: even though they don’t get along Jesus still spent time with the Pharisees. He doesn’t just hang around the people He likes. Jesus willingly ministers and teaches hostile, frustrating people. He still treats them with love, granted tough love but love. Being like Jesus means that just because someone is an antagonist in your life doesn’t mean you treat them like an enemy. Jesus loves everyone, religious people included. So should we.
Lk 14:1 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 dropsy. Jesus asked the Pharisees 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 away. Then he asked them, “If one of you has a son or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull him out?” Lk 14:6 And they had nothing to say.
The Pharisees who are the ultra conservative religious party invite Jesus over for a meal. These guys are looking for a fight and just waiting for Jesus to give them the opportunity. They are like a pack of hyenas trying to catch the lion off guard so they can attack. It’s Sabbath. The Jews have had this battle with Jesus so many times already. It is painful. These religious people are like the social awkward guy who philosophy with girls if you cant sweep them off their feet just wear them down. If you ask enough they will yes just to get you to leave them alone. Here there are, they wont change the subject, they wont change their minds, and they cant focus on anything else. So they set up to fight Jesus over the Sabbath again. That is the religious strategy. Just fight until you wear the other person down, and they will surrender.
While on His way to the Pharisee’s house Jesus comes across a man with dropsy. Dropsy is a condition where a person’s body or body parts swell up due to an excessive accumulation of fluid. So this guy is bloated up like the Stay Puft marshmallow man. Today we refer to this condition as an edema. Dropsy is not a disease, it is a symptom of various other diseases and usually indicates a heart, kidney, or liver problem. This swelling can be very painful and can make moving or working difficult, depending on what problem causes the edema it can be fatal.
Instead of just healing the guy then battling with the religious leaders, Jesus puts them on the spot. He poses the question is it lawful to heal, to do good on the Sabbath? They were looking to trap Jesus but Jesus ends up trapping them. They want Jesus to heal on the Sabbath so they can accuse Him of breaking their law. So they cant say it is lawful to heal. But at the same time they cant say it is unlawful as that doesn’t make any sense. How can it be unlawful to do good? Plus calling healing unlawful would reveal the truth: their law is not about doing good but about power and control. So Jesus tosses the obvious contradiction in their laws right in their faces and they remain silent.
They should have repented. When you show a religious person they error of their ways they will typically do one of two things: attack you and your character, or stop talking. If you are one of those people who like to point out where everyone else is wrong and then when someone shows you areas in your life that need to change and you respond in one of those two ways, you might be a bit religious, and you need to change. Start by learning to admit it when you are wrong. Practice saying it out loud.
So Jesus dances around, chants some magic words, raises His hand towards heaven, and slaps the dude on the head. Stay Puft falls over, shakes on the ground a bit, and is healed. No, Jesus is not a faith healer. His healings are not showy and ridiculous. He just touches the guy and the man is healed.
Jesus clearly and deliberately breaks their laws to show that God’s greater concern is for mercy and compassion. Religious people are so focused on being conservative and being right that they stop caring about the people who are hurting all around them.
Religious people love policies. Policies are nice, they are neat, they keep everything organized. Life is messy. You cant force life to be neat by trying to add policies to it. There is no one right answer for every situation. The Pharisees don’t want to deal with messiness of life so they say no healing on the Sabbath. Jesus says, someone is hurting and in need, I’m going to heal them and I don’t care what day of the week it is. Jesus does not stop doing good just because the religious people tell Him to.
These religious leaders want to accuse Jesus, they want to fight with Him but He has already given them His TKO punch. They are down for the count with nothing to say.
Lk 14:7 When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honor at the table, he told them this parable: “When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, 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 man your seat.’ Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. But when you are 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 your fellow guests. Lk 14:11 For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
After their showdown in the streets they make their way to the dinner banquet. The Jewish banquet was set out on a table which sat about six inches off the ground in the shape of a giant U. Around the table were cushions on which three men could recline. The host would sit at the top of the U. The most honored guest sat to his right and the second most honored guest sat to his left. The seating chart went back and forth across the table until you reached the lowest seat which was the furthest away from the host.
Where you sat at the meal was a statement of your social standing. The closer you could get to the host the more important you were considered. If you tried slipping up a place or two you might increase your standing in the group. If you stepped too far out the host would come ask you to move and you would be shamed in front of all the guests. These guys are like jr. high boys calling ‘shotgun’ and then fighting over the rules of when you could call it.
The whole thing was shallow and selfish. The whole mentality is: I want what is best for me and I don’t care what happens to anyone else. So Jesus says don’t take the best seat, take the worst seat. If you try too hard to honor yourself, then likely someone will come along and put you back in your place thus shaming you. If you humble yourself and take the lowest role then you are likely going to be honored and promoted; not only spiritually but socially. When you humble yourself you will find others honoring you, if you honor yourself they will find ways to humble you.
We so often battle for social position. We talk down to people, insult them, make fun of them all in efforts to make ourselves look better. If you stopped to consider the jokes you made you will probably find a lot of you say is in effort to make yourself look better by making someone else look worse. This is not the kind of attitude Jesus displays. He calls us instead to humility.
The first step to humility is changing the way you talk to and about people. Stop making jokes at the expense of others. Stop trying to defend yourself when you are the butt of the joke by shifting the attention to someone else. You don’t need to devalue yourself just to increase the way you value others. Jesus expects us to share His love even in casual social settings. Sometimes it looks like willfully not arguing with someone who has insulted you even when you know you can win. It may mean allowing others to boast without attempting to show them up. It may be encouraging and supporting someone even when doing so requires personal sacrifice. A selfish person is always thinking: what about me? A humble person is always thinking: what about them?
Jesus says if you want to be like me you have to learn to humble yourself. You don’t take the lowliest seat because you think you are trash. You take the lowliest seat because you love other people and you care more about them being honored than about yourself. When you humble yourself not out of duty but out of love you can joyfully embrace the lower places. A humble person is someone who thinks of others before themselves. When you humble yourself you are taking your eyes off of yourself, you are changing your focus from a self-centered life to an others-centered life. That is how Jesus lived, doing this makes us look more like Jesus, and God honors that.
God honors those who humble themselves. God humiliates those who honor themselves. So which side of that would you rather be on? It is much better to let God honor you. If you are taking the low places so that others will notice how humble you are then you are proud. Guess what, that means God is going to have to humiliate you. When you take the lowest place you do so not for love of self but for the love of others.
God turns everything upside down. If you make your life all about yourself, if you focus on self glorification and are proud and arrogant trying to get yourself to the top then God will drop you to the bottom. If you make yourself lower, then God will glorify you and lift you up.
Lk 14:12 Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and 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 resurrection of the righteous.” When one of those at the table with him heard this, he said to Jesus, “Blessed is the man who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God.” Jesus replied: “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. The first said, ‘I have just bought a field, and I must go and see it. Please excuse me.’ “Another said, ‘I have just bought five yoke of oxen, and I’m on my way to try them out. Please excuse me.’ “Still another said, ‘I just got married, so I can’t come.’ “The servant came back and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and ordered his 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 country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be full. Lk 14:24 I tell you, not one of those men who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.’ ”
God is throwing a banquet in honor of His Son. He invites everyone to be a part of this great feast. Many who are invited will reject the invitation and go about their own business focusing on their own lives. Two guys make stupid excuses: I have to check out my property I just bought. Do you know anyone dumb enough to buy property without first checking it out? Our excuses are no less lame: God I’m too busy, I’m too tired, I’m in a weird place right now, I have to take care of this or do that.
One guy says he just got married. That was a valid reason as the feasts did not allow men and women to co-mingle. He doesn’t want to be separated from his wife. He is still putting His family before God. If we do not treat the kingdom of God as a matter of the utmost importance then we may miss the opportunity to come to the banquet.
God invites all. Some are too selfish to come. Those who are excluded from God’s feast and His kingdom are those who callously rejected God’s Son. You have to put Jesus first. The only way to do that is to humble yourself. If your life is all about you and your glory then you cannot follow Jesus. Only thing matters: Jesus. Life is all about Jesus. If you humble yourself then Jesus can honor you. Jesus changes everything. Our lives are all about God. The humility that Jesus calls us to is a willingness to lay ourselves down at His feet and to serve Him.
Jesus humbled Himself even to the point of dying on a cross. What He is asking of us is nothing more than we learn to follow His example. We want to learn how to be more like Jesus, this is the goal of our lives. One of the best places to start, is by learning to humble yourself. I want to challenge you this week, when you go out and you live in on the mission field God has placed you in, I want you to find one way where you can humble yourself and just start practicing treating others with more value than you treat yourself with.
