Bible Text: Luke 14:1-11 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus | Series: Trinity 17 | Jesus accomplishes a total reversal in our Gospel for this morning. There is the man with dropsy, ugly, in pain, sitting in the lowest seat, not even wanting the highest seat, because then people would look at his ugliness and hear his groans, and he would be ashamed. And Jesus raises him up to the highest seat, takes away his pain and his ugliness and gives him honor and glory. Then there are the Pharisees, who have taken the best seats, who think a lot of themselves, who imagine they’re worthy to sit and converse with Jesus, and Jesus puts them in their place, embarrassingly points out the elephant in the room, that they are grown men all competing for recognition, and so humiliates them and puts them in the lowest seats. So when Jesus says at the end, “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted,” He has literally just shown them how this works.
And this is how it still works with Jesus and in His Church. Always. “God resists the proud,
But gives grace to the humble. Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time.” God resists the proud, he’s opposed to them. To be proud is quite simply to think too much of yourself, to think you deserve what God didn’t give you, to claim what doesn’t belong to you. So it’s pride to demand anything of God because of what you’ve done. Because you haven’t deserved anything, you’re thinking too much of yourself, you’re a sinner. As Isaiah says, All our righteous deeds are as filthy rags.
But that doesn’t mean that humility means claiming nothing before God. No, you must claim something. There is a parable Jesus tells of a landowner who left three servants with large sums of money and went off on a trip. When he returned, two of the servants had made a lot of money and increased the landowner’s wealth. But the one was timid and didn’t do anything with the money, he just buried it, because he was afraid of the king’s severity. Jesus calls that servant wicked. He says he’s worthless. He takes his money away and has him cast into outer darkness. He doesn’t like timidity anymore than he likes pride. If pride is claiming too much for yourself, timidity is claiming nothing of God at all. It’s fearing to approach God on God’s terms. It’s fearing to claim what God has given you as your own.
You won’t find a single example in all the Bible of a Christian coming to Jesus and claiming nothing. They claim nothing of themselves – that would be pride. But they claim everything of Jesus and His promises. The great example is the Syrophoenician woman who argues with Jesus, insists that He give her what she asks, is willing even to be called a dog so long as Jesus gives her what He promised. There is no timidity there. And remember the woman who was terrified after Jesus asked who touched the tip of His cloak, she was afraid, as she should have been – she had just touched God, but no timidity kept her from claiming mercy of Jesus and taking hold of his clothes.
Pride is the great sin. It comes before destruction. But we may not exchange one sin for another. We can’t trade pride for timidity. It’s pride’s twin sister. So yes, claim nothing of yourself, but claim everything of Jesus. This is humility. Look at the prodigal son. He came back to his father and said, I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your slaves. But the Father ignored his stupid request. You’ll be my son. You’ll be what I make of you, not what you think you deserve. I’ll lavish you with my love, and I won’t listen to your protests. Don’t be timid. Be humble and receive what I give. And so it goes with us.
To be humble means not simply claiming nothing of yourself, but also claiming everything of your God. It means to reject pride at the same time as rejecting timidity. It means to claim the lowest place, but rejoice that Jesus exalts you to the highest place. Look, just look, at what you can claim from your God, what He wants you to claim from Him. He made you. He created you to love Him and know Him and be with Him forever. And so you can appeal to Him not to abandon you in your time of need. He came for you, He took on your nature and became your Brother, He poured out His soul unto death for you and bore your sins’ punishment, He shed His precious blood for you. And so you can appeal to Him for mercy. And when He commands you to come up to the table and to take His body and His blood, pride will say you don’t need it, pride will say you’ve deserved it, timidity will say you’re not worthy, but faith and humility will not argue with your Lord. He wants to exalt you. He has made you worthy. He tells you to come. He promises to give you rest. Humility agrees with Jesus.
So the ugly, dropsied wretch hiding in the corner must take his place before Jesus. If he is timid and runs away, he remains ugly and wretched. And the prideful Pharisees, fighting over their seats of honor, will have to take the lower seat before Jesus will exalt them. If they remain prideful, God resists the proud, pride cometh before destruction, a haughty spirit before the fall. But the one who listens to Jesus drops His pride and his cowardice alike, and takes confidence in the words of His Savior, “Friend, come up higher.”
Every Sunday we confess, “I a poor miserable sinner.” We claim nothing of ourselves. We condemn our pride. But we also come without timidity to God, with intrepid hearts, as the apostle commands, “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” So we say, “And I pray you out of your boundless mercy, and for the sake of the holy, innocent, bitter sufferings and death of your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to be gracious and merciful to me.” We are claiming everything here of our God. That He is merciful. That His Son has suffered and died for us. So we come boldly. We claim everything. And God gives everything. He forgives and raises us up and so he gives us honor with one another.
That’s what Jesus says. “Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you.” Jesus gives real honor, that far outstrips any titles or fame this fleeting world could give you. You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. That’s what St. Paul says. Jesus says, “You are my friends.” This is not a status we have to wait to enjoy until we’re in heaven. We enjoy it now. And we need to treat each other this way. We are the people of God. There is no greater honor in all the world than to be a Christian. I would never insult my father or gossip about my sister or put down my mother behind her back. I wouldn’t because I honor these earthly offices and I love these people. But what does Jesus say about His family, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” You kneel together at the same altar. You take the same body and blood into your mouth. You call on the same Father as your God. This is the will of your Father in heaven. So St. John says, “My little children, love one another. As God has loved you, so you must love one another.”
This is what it means to be humble, to be confident not in yourself but in what your Lord gives and love it. Christ has given you forgiveness, so embrace it and love it and treasure it. He has given you many brothers and sisters, so embrace them and honor them, as Christ has honored them. Those Pharisees despised the dropsied ugly wretch. None of that for us. Christ exalts us all at this table. That is our honor.
It’s always God who gives you the place, the honor. Otherwise you’ve usurped it, and that’s pride. God has first made you a Christian. So claim it. Live it. Christians love one another, forgive one another. God has made you children of earthly fathers and mothers, he’s made some of you husbands and wives, some of you fathers and mothers, grandmothers and grandfathers. To be humble is to receive these seats as God’s gifts. I sit at the head of my dinner table. Because God gave me that high place. I dare not take a lower seat, because God told me, Friend, come up higher. He put me there as father of my home. And my wife sits at the other end, because God put her there. Our children have the lower seats. They have to sit on benches actually. But the time will come for God to raise them up also, to lead their own homes. We have positions in life where God puts us all with different roles. And this is how we love one another. By accepting those roles without pride in ourselves and without timidity, but confidence that God gives us jobs to do as Christians. Just as we allow Christ to exalt us and place us forgiven and holy, Christian saints, in the Kingdom of God, so we allow Christ to place us as fathers, mothers, children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, workers and bosses, and because Christ has put us there, we know we are in the right place.
And God has put us here. And He tells us to come together to Him to be exalted together by Him. And this exaltation does not clash with our humility. They are one and the same. Just as Christ’s great glory was his humiliation on the cross, because here He won us as His own and obeyed His Father’s will. So our humility is not to win our own honor, but to find it in Jesus. So find it again today. Your Savior honors you. He makes you to commune with God. The angels worship Him as He serves you at table. What mercy our God shows us. Praise be His love forever and ever.