Bible Text: Luke 14:1-11 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus | Series: Trinity 2022 | Jesus says, “Take the lowest seat.” It looks a lot like the advice many other wise men and philosophers give. Solomon, the great wise man of the Bible, says,
Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence
or stand in the place of the great,
for it is better to be told, “Come up here,”
than to be put lower in the presence of a noble.
But Solomon comes far short of saying what Jesus says in our Gospel, “take the lowest seat.” It’s one thing not to sit right next to the host, it’s quite another to sit at the kiddy table. Practical wisdom, the wisdom that is written on the heart of man and is accessible even to unbelievers, will tell you not to be arrogant and sit in the highest seat. Plato says it. Aristotle says it. They’ll tell you not to come over to my house and sit in Lisa’s spot, because I might just tell you to get out of my wife’s spot, because in my house you’re not as important as she is. But practical wisdom does not tell you to instead go and sit yourself at the kid’s table, because that would be ridiculous (unless of course you’re a kid). But that’s what Jesus is saying. Take the lowest spot.
So Jesus isn’t simply giving practical advice here – On How to Conduct Yourself At a Dinner Party. He’s teaching us how to be Christians. He’s teaching us what humility is. The very same philosophers who tell us not to sit in the highest spot will also tell you that humility is a vice, a bad thing. Aristotle says it explicitly. Humility is bad. Arrogance is bad. You should be somewhere in the middle, be moderate, practice moderation. This is the golden mean. You don’t want to think too much of yourself – that’s arrogance. But you also don’t want to think too little of yourself – that’s humility. You want to have the right sort of view of yourself, know your place, not too high and not too low – that’s moderation. So the philosopher will never tell you to sit in the lowest spot, because that would be to lower yourself below your dignity, below what your worth.
But that’s exactly what Jesus tells you to do. Sit in the lowest spot. And He isn’t telling you to lie, only to act like you deserve the lowest spot. Jesus is the Truth, there is no lie in Him, He hates lies. He doesn’t want you to fake it, He wants you to do it. He tells you to take the lowest place because this is the realistic opinion of yourself, this is the truth, that you deserve the lowest place. That’s the point and it’s the wisdom no philosopher of this age, no Aristotle, no Plato, ever knew, because it takes God, it takes Jesus, to wring this confession out of us, that of ourselves, by our sinful nature, we deserve nothing but punishment, that if there is anything good in us even now it is completely God’s gift, and there is nothing to boast of but the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The alternative is to judge ourselves and others by outward standards. How else are you going to claim the middle spot or the second highest spot among men? You have to lay down standards. I’m older, I’m richer, I’m wiser, I’m more educated, I’m better looking, I’m funnier, I’m a better talker, I smell better, I have a higher rank, whatever it is. This is how we judge one another in daily life. And some of it’s necessary. Children should sit at the children’s table, give up their seats to the adults. You should talk more if you have more to say. Solomon’s Proverbs are full of this practical wisdom, and it’s how God keeps order on this earth. There are distinctions among us. But this is not the way it works when we stand before God in His Kingdom. No one gets to take the middle seat with him. No one gets to take the second highest seat. The only honest thing to do, true thing to do, is to take the lowest seat, without distinction.
The man with dropsy is the picture of this. Dropsy makes you thirsty, because the water you take in goes to all the wrong places and builds up under your skin. So the great irony and torture of dropsy is that the more water you drink the more thirsty you get. You’re thirsty, so you drink water, and then the water goes under your skin and makes you more thirsty, so you drink more water, and it never quenches your thirst, only makes you more thirsty and more miserable. This is the picture of our sinful nature. The more we sin the more we thirst for sin. The porn addict never satisfies himself; he’s only drawn further and further into the filth. The drunk thinks he can satisfy his longing by drinking, but it only makes him yearn for more and more and more. The greedy man is never satisfied, no matter how much money he gets, he can always get more and the more he gets the more he wants. The hater can’t ever get enough vengeance, the ambitious can’t ever get enough fame, the gossip can’t ever get enough dirt. This is how sin works. The only way to get rid of the thirst for more and more and more is to take care first of the disease. To heal the dropsy. And only Jesus can heal the disease.
The Pharisees are obviously the bad guys. When you get angry with Jesus for healing a man, it should be clear that you’re on the wrong team. It’s like the abortion advocates – last summer I gave a talk at a pro-life rally and a fellow drove by and cussed at us and said he hopes all our babies die. I told my kids I was happy they were there to hear it, because that’s clearly evil. That guy’s obviously the baddy, a bad guy. He hates babies. So it goes with the Pharisees. They don’t want Jesus to heal on the Sabbath. That makes them bad. Obviously. Jesus takes them to task for this constantly. Probably the greatest example happens in the previous chapter of Luke. There He healed a woman who was crippled and bent over, had a spirit of infirmity that left her miserable for eighteen years, and the ruler of the synagogue got angry and said, “There are six days on which men ought to work; therefore come and be healed on them, and not on the Sabbath.” And Jesus answered, “Hypocrite! Does not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or donkey from the stall, and lead it away to water it? So ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound – think of it – for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath?” And none of them could answer him a word. Because they’re bad. And Jesus showed it.
How do they get to this point? That they become so clearly anti-human? That they don’t rejoice to see Jesus heal a woman or a man on the Sabbath? They establish their own righteousness. That’s how. If they let God’s Word establish what is good and right, they’d see their sin and they’d ask Jesus for mercy. Because the Law of God shines deep into the heart and shows how unbearably horrid our sinful flesh is, like a dropsied man thirsting for more and more and more of what kills him. But if you throw God’s law aside and make your own rules and judge others by them, then you raise yourself up to such a pique of arrogance that you can condemn a man for healing on the Sabbath. God told the Jews to keep the Sabbath, but as Jesus proves again and again, this law did not forbid all work, it only forbade servile work. So you can lead your donkey to water on the sabbath. You can help your donkey out of a ditch on the sabbath. You can eat on the sabbath – that’s work too. But the Pharisees made up their own rules for the Sabbath. We actually have a number of their Rabbi’s rules that they kept. If a fly is buzzing around you, you can’t slap at it, that would be work, unless it bites you, then you can slap it, that’s not work. You can’t light a lantern to read a book if you’re by yourself, because that would be work, but if there are two or more of you, go ahead and light the lantern, that’s not work. They just make up the rules and then they keep their own made-up rules and then imagine they’re righteous and judge others who don’t keep their silly little rules. The same thing happens today. The pro-death crowd or the LGBTQ crowd make up the rules. And they expect you to follow them. Read their books to your children. Approve of their drag shows. Call a she a he or a ze or a zer or a they. Say it’s good. Then you will get their approval, then you will be righteous. But when the smoke settles and the air is clear, it is obvious to anyone looking on that Jesus is good and babies are precious and men are men and the anti-human forces are evil.
There is no standard that stands, except the Law of God. And before it no one stands righteous. Look at the holiest men and women in the Bible and you will see their honest confession. They take the lowest seat. And they are not faking it. It’s no show. Abraham, when he pleads with God for Sodom and Gomorrah, says, Allow me to speak just once more, though I am but dust and ashes. What, is he insincere? Is this fake humility? David, when Saul is pursuing him and trying to kill him, cries out, “Why are you persecuting me, who am but a dog?” The Syro-phoenician woman, when Jesus calls her a dog, agrees and begs for the scraps. St. Paul writes to St. Timothy and says, “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.” They are not faking it. They mean every word. They take the lowest seat.
So when you come to church mean what you say, “I a poor, miserable sinner.” Prepare to say these words and to mean every syllable. If you don’t feel it, then stare into God’s law, dread above all becoming a hypocrite and judging yourself by your own standard. There is One who judges, Jesus says, and His judgment is true. Confess the truth about yourself. Take the lowest spot because you know you deserve it. Let the law do its work, exposing whatever it is dirties your soul, the worry about money, the lustful thoughts, the laziness, the envy, the greed, the fear of death, the self-pity, the gossiping heart, let the law do its work and show how you don’t even deserve a seat at the table.
And Jesus will raise you up. He is the living water. Water flows down to the lowest places. It comes rushing down in a waterfall into the lowest pits. Take the lowest place and Jesus’ grace will rush down to you there and raise you up to heaven. He shows you the truth of your sin, yes, and He shows you the greater truth of His righteousness: your Savior loves you, He exalts you, He lowers Himself to misery and death so that He can raise you up to happiness and life. He is the Lover of the truth, and when you confess the truth of your sin, He insists all the more strongly on the truth of your righteousness, because He won it. Your sin was on Him. It cannot be still on you. The highest place is to sit with Jesus. There is no higher. The law can thunder and blast and put you down where you belong of yourself, but Jesus is your Savior and the law can say nothing against Him as He raises you up to sit beside Him and presents you to His Father in heaven and says, Here is my beloved for whom I have fought and for whom I have shed my precious blood, look how beautiful she is, robed in My righteousness, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, see how My blood has washed away every stain. And the Father sees no other truth when Christ pleads for you, when His Son’s mercy is placed before His face. The truth that the sinner is righteous who trusts in Jesus, that those who were so low have now been raised so high to be called children of God, the Bride of Christ, who dine at the feast of salvation and eat the food that angels never had.
At this feast we sit as equals. One Lord, one faith, one Baptism, One God and Father of us all. We are Christians. This is our glory. This is our height, our exaltation. All other accomplishments, all good works, all standards by which we might make distinctions between one another, they all pale into nothing compared to the excellence we have together in Christ’s righteousness. We reign with Christ in the heavenly places. What could be greater? And so we are not ashamed to take the lowest places here, to have the same mind in ourselves which was in Christ Jesus, to serve one another, to forgive one another. The highest virtue is humility, because it is only those who humble themselves who are exalted, only those who know their sin who find in Jesus their Savior. Our standard is God’s standard, His holy Law which lays us all low and the Gospel of Christ crucified for us, which exalts us all together to the throne of grace, where we will stand before God in righteousness and purity forever.