Bible Text: Luke 14:15-24 | Preacher: Pastor Andrew Richard | Series: Trinity 2023 | The feast that God prepares is very different from the feast that Jesus was attending in the reading. Jesus was at a great supper put on by a ruler of the Pharisees. The host had invited people who were rich and powerful and respected. The host and the guests were full of pride, such that what they were having for supper didn’t even matter compared with who got to sit where at the table. The host was completely self-interested, merely using his guests to bolster his own reputation. The feast was utterly lacking in grace and love.
Jesus taught them at this feast. He taught them to take the lowest place at feasts, “For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Lk. 14:11). He taught them to invite people who could not invite them in return or repay them: “But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you; for you shall be repaid at the resurrection of the just” (Lk. 14:13-14). Jesus speaks this way because this is how God acts toward man with his own feast. The feast of God is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We feast by hearing the Gospel and believing it. We feast in the Sacrament of Christ’s body and blood. At this feast of the Gospel God casts out the proud who rely on themselves and He raises up those who are humiliated by their own sins. To this feast God invites those who are poor and crippled and blind and lame. He invites those who know that they are corrupt and not as He made them to be. He invites those who cast themselves on the mercy of another because they know they are insufficient in themselves. And they are not disappointed. God has put everything into this feast. Grace and love are not lacking here. No, this feast is the epitome of grace and love. Greater love has no one than this, than he lay down his life for his friends (Jn. 15:13), and this is what our Lord has put into His feast. He has laid down His life for His guests and taken it up again, so that He is both the host and the feast, so that His nail-pierced hand reaches out and feeds sinners with Himself for the forgiveness of sins.
Yes, “Blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God!” “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb!” (Rev. 19:9). “They shall neither hunger anymore nor thirst anymore” (Rev. 7:16). In the Gospel of our Lord we receive forgiveness, life, and salvation, the medicine of immortality, the antidote against death. In this feast the Lord wipes away every tear from our eyes, shields us from our enemies, and strengthens us to bear our crosses by feeding us with the fruit of His most blessed cross. How far people are willing to travel in uncertain hope, to meet with a human doctor, for the lengthening of earthly life! How much people are willing to spend, not knowing whether this surgery will work, whether that medicine will work, whether life or death awaits! And even in the everyday, mundane matters of life, who can say if our expectations will become reality, if the good that we seek is what we will acquire? Do we not find in all things but one that life is changeable and unpredictable, that what we seek isn’t always what we find, that disappointment is inevitable?
In all things but one. In all things except this blessed feast to which our Lord invites us. Here He who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think lavishes His grace and love upon us in a wonderfully reliable and predictable and absolutely certain way. Here we seek and find, every time. Here there is no disappointed expectation, no failed plan. In every other area of life we must bear the consequence of being sinners, though even then God does not treat us fully as we deserve, for His mercy triumphs over judgment (Jas. 2:13). But here the humble, the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame find nothing but grace and love―no hint of wrath and condemnation, but a Lord who has suffered all that we merited and bestowed on us every good thing that we have not merited, a Lord who does not seek to be repaid, for He came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many (Mt. 20:28), a Lord who says, “Friend, move up higher” (Lk. 14:10), and seats poor sinners not merely near the head of the table, but with Himself on His own throne in heaven (Eph. 2:6, Rev. 3:21). This is no uncertain hope; this is no earthly Physician; this is no mortal life. This is the feast of the Lord, and there is nothing greater or more glorious on earth. Of all things worth seeking, it is the most worth seeking, because of all goods, our Lord is the highest good. “Blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God!”
Yet the man who spoke those words didn’t get it, and Jesus knew it. Jesus doesn’t disagree with the man’s words. Obviously the words themselves are true. But sounding pious and believing rightly were unfortunately very different things for the Pharisees. The man could say the right thing about the feast of the Lord, as could many at that earthly dinner party, but he didn’t think he needed the benefits, and he valued other things more. So we find that many can talk rightly about the importance of church or the importance of the Bible, but few actually believe it. You’ve probably talked with someone who doesn’t go to church, but talks about the importance of and need for something like good Christian morality in our country. Those who really value the Lord’s feast don’t merely honor it with their words, but honor it by coming and receiving all the Lord’s benefits, because they believe that they actually need those benefits. So Jesus tells the parable about all the guests who had been invited to the Lord’s feast but excused themselves from coming. In doing so, He gives us warnings, lest we become entangled in the things of this world.
And what things can prove entangling in this world? Note what kept the first two men from attending the feast: “The first said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of ground, and I must go and see it.’…And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to test them.’” Both of them bought something, and both of them said, “I ask you to have me excused.” Now Jesus isn’t saying that you shouldn’t spend money. The point is what Jesus says elsewhere, “No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Lk. 16:13). We think of money as an inanimate thing, and the things we buy with it as other inanimate things. We don’t think of mammon as a beast that needs to be tamed or a willful being trying to gain mastery of us. Yet Jesus speaks of mammon as a potential master that makes claims on us and compels us to do things. That’s how the first man speaks in the parable. According to the Greek, he says, “I have bought a field and I have a compulsion to go out and see it.” I have a compulsion! And what was compelling him? His mammon was compelling him, his money and possessions. Certainly the man’s own desires and passions drove him on, but that compulsion wasn’t merely internal. His field was calling to him, and he was compelled to heed that call and absent himself from that which exceeds all earthly wealth.
But you, take heed lest your possessions rule you. Two out of the three men in the parable let their money and possessions keep them from the Lord’s feast. Two out of the three cast aside the Gospel in favor of the fleeting stuff of earth. Take your mammon in hand and make it serve you and your ultimate desires. Make your mammon serve the Lord’s feast, and don’t let it be a detriment to your salvation. Use your mammon to support the proclamation of the Gospel and to love one another, and do not listen to mammon when it tries to make claims on you. Tell it, “No, Mammon, I’m your master. You’re not mine. You will not keep me from church. In fact, I’ll bring you with me to church and teach you to serve the same master whom I serve.” That’s how it must be among us Christians.
So Jesus warns us about the allure of mammon. And then he introduces the third man. That man says, “I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.” Bring her along! Except that’s not usually how it works. Usually the Christian becomes ensnared by the unbeliever. This is why the Apostle Paul warns so strongly, “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?” (2 Cor. 6:14). Take care whom you marry. This is no light matter. Choosing a spouse according to the desires of the flesh or the earthly advantages, or simply out of desperation, can lead to a departure from the Lord’s feast and the loss of eternal salvation. Better to remain a virgin unto salvation than marry unto damnation.
But this third man also represents someone who has completely given himself to the world. In the book of Revelation the world is portrayed as a prostitute who commits fornication with the kings of the earth, who wears purple and scarlet and gold and gems and pearls, who holds a golden cup full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication. She is drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus (Rev. 17:1-6). Yet she looks like a good time. She looks like she could give you everything you want and more. Yet she is doomed to destruction. The Lord cries out in Revelation 18, “her plagues will come in one day—death and mourning and famine. And she will be utterly burned with fire, for strong is the Lord God who judges her” (Rev. 18:8). You don’t want to partake of the world’s judgment, so do not partake of the things that would implicate you in that judgment. Heed the voice of the Lord, who says, “Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues” (Rev. 18:4).
Chasing money and pleasure and influence isn’t worth it. The greatest riches are the riches of Christ, whose blood has redeemed you, whose righteousness avails to secure for you eternal life. If you were a billionaire could you have that sort of security? No. Earthly money doesn’t even give security on earth, and can it extend to heaven? But “you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9). And what pleasure is there in this world that can compare to the pleasure that Christ gives? The devil has his parodies of true pleasure, parodies like sexual immorality and flattery and drunkenness and gluttony. But what is the highest pleasure? Is it not having a good conscience? Is it not knowing that you have peace with God through Jesus Christ? Is it not joy in your redemption? There is no higher pleasure in this life than that. Or what more could you desire of influence than you already have? You can pray to God the Father Almighty and make requests of Him. You have the Lord’s ear turned toward you and heedful to you. Business connections, acquaintance with the powerful, influential friends―these all pale in comparison with having a Father in heaven and having the gift of prayer.
You have the greatest things that man can have. What can the world offer in comparison with them? So do not love the world or the things in the world (1 Jn. 2:15). Don’t fall in love with it or marry yourself off to it. The world will give you its dowry of plagues: death and mourning and famine. Use the world, but have no regard for it. Then you will not have to say, “I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.”
But the enticements of the world are strong. The world possesses more than the compulsion of mammon. The world has many compulsions, and those compulsions are in line with the desires of the flesh, such that the world finds a willing partner in the sinful nature. The devil uses such agreement of the world’s compulsions and the lusts of the flesh in an attempt to form an ungodly union and send us to hell for our honeymoon. We might wonder what greater force could set itself against such compulsion.
The master of the house gives us the answer in the parable. When the servant returns and people won’t come, he says, “Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.” The Lord has His own compulsion. And what does this compulsion look like? The Lord’s compulsion is not a whip of the devil or the bondage of the world or the chains of the sinful nature. The Lord’s compulsion is His preaching. The Lord preaches His Law, and through it the Holy Spirit cuts men to the heart so that they are troubled to the core and cry out with the crowd on Pentecost, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” (Ac. 2:37). The Lord compels us to the question by making us acutely aware of our sins, by making us feel with David, “Day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my vitality was turned into the drought of summer” (Ps. 32:4). When we feel such terror of conscience, that is not our doing, but the Lord’s, who compels us to the truth by His Law.
But the Lord does not leave us there. He compels us further by the Gospel, which is more like an enticing or a drawing, as Jesus says in John 6, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (Jn. 6:44). But whether we call it compulsion or drawing, we again are not the actors, but the recipients of action. Our Lord is acting upon us, bringing us to Himself, bringing us to His feast. And note how different the Lord’s compulsion is from the world’s. When the world compels, we end up where we don’t want to be. We end up in pain and sorrow and death, and we could have easily gotten ourselves there without the world’s help. But the Lord’s compulsion is a blessed compulsion that brings us where we always wanted to be, though when we were lost we did not know it and could not get to it. The Lord’s compulsion brings to what is good, and we rejoice in the forgiveness of sins and life eternal.
O Lord, leave us not to the world’s compulsion, but do Thou intervene with Thine own compulsion. Compel us to repentance with Thy Law and compel us to Thyself through the Gospel. Forsake us not, for if Thou dost abandon us to ourselves, we are lost. And see what hope you have that the Lord will answer this prayer. He adamantly gives the order, “Compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.” The Lord’s desire that we be at His feast is even greater than our own, and He acts with strength according to His desire. His Word is ever more powerful than anything the world can do. So come, for everything is now ready. Blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God! Amen.