St Luke 14:15–24 | Preacher: Rev. Andrew Richard
A great danger for the Christian life is to apply the Word of God to others, but not to yourself. I mention this because today’s Gospel reading is one of the easiest to think of in terms of someone else who sits in the pew, or would be sitting in the pew, who should be sitting in the pew, but who isn’t! The timing of this reading is almost humorous. It comes during the summer when church attendance is generally lower, and the sinful flesh likes to use other people’s absence from church to feel better about itself. “Jesus said, ‘Come to the feast,’ and I did. I’m not like that guy with the land or the oxen or the wife. I’m not like insert-name-here who usually sits right over there, but isn’t today. I thank you, God, that I am not like other men!” And you see the danger. The danger is pride, Pharisaical pride.
Pride excludes from the feast. That’s one of Jesus’ main points at the feast that’s happening in the Gospel reading. If we back up a little in Luke 14, we get the setting. “Now it happened, as [Jesus] went into the house of one of the rulers of the Pharisees to eat bread on the Sabbath, that they watched Him closely” (Lk. 14:1). This is when the man suffering from dropsy comes in, and Jesus questions the lawyers and Pharisees, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” (Lk. 14:3). The Pharisees were silent, because pride doesn’t understand love. They couldn’t comprehend what was obviously the right answer. Jesus healed the man and let him go, and then Jesus addressed the pride of the guests and the pride of the host. He instructed the guests not to take the best place at the feast, lest they be forced down, but to take the lowest place, and be told to move higher, “For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Lk. 14:11). Then He instructed the host not to invite people who could repay him by inviting him back in return, but to “invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind” (Lk. 14:13).
Of course the lawyers and Pharisees didn’t want to hear it. “They love the best places at feasts” (Mt. 23:6), because feeling better than other people made them think that they were righteous. The host didn’t want to associate with lowly company for fear that his esteem in the eyes of men would decrease, he wouldn’t feel as good about himself, and he would have to question his own righteousness. And this is what they were after: righteousness. That’s what every human heart is after. The desire to be righteous has fueled every feud and grudge in the history of the world. The desire to be righteous inclines men to latch onto the world’s opinions and buzzwords in order to be accepted. The desire to be righteous leads men to pursue riches and fame, power and pleasure, because if I can prove I’m right and that guy is wrong, if I am better than other people, if I am prospering in life, then my sinful nature draws the conclusion, “I am righteous.”
Now this is a non sequitur, a fancy Latin phrase meaning “it does not follow,” or in other words, “you can’t get there from here.” Being right in one instance, even if it doesn’t involve overlooking the log in your eye to see the speck in your neighbor’s―being right in one instance does not mean you are eternally righteous before the throne of God. Feeling better than your neighbor, even if that feeling is accurate, does not make you any less worthy of hell. Having power to command other men does not remove you from under the power of God; earthly wealth cannot buy an hour of earthly life, let alone eternal life; being famous in the eyes of men does not make God think any more highly of you; pleasure is a fine distraction and might convince you that all is right with the world, but it does not in any way translate to righteousness or eternal pleasure in heaven. Being right, feeling better than someone, having the stuff of earth can lead to pride if you’re not careful, and then pride convinces you that you’re righteous of yourself, and then Jesus doesn’t matter anymore as your righteousness.
But Jesus does matter as your righteousness. He is the only way you can be righteous before God, and Jesus offers you His righteousness at His feast. The feast that Jesus has prepared is His Gospel. Men had previously been invited, that is, God’s people in the Old Testament had received many prophecies of a coming Savior who would save them from their sins. Then finally the time came when the Lord said, “Come, for everything is now ready” (Lk. 14:17). Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed (1 Cor. 5:7). John the Baptist declared it, the apostles declared it, and ministers of the Word still declare it today: Here is righteousness! Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! You need what Jesus here offers because you can’t get it anywhere else. The deepest longing of the human heart is here satisfied. The restless wandering of man here ceases, as Jesus has said, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Mt. 11:28). Come, for everything is now ready!
But the men in the Gospel reading don’t come to the feast. They think they’re all set, and that they don’t need what Jesus has to offer. The first man has a field, he just got it, he’s excited. It’s nice that someone invited him to a feast, but the field! The field is more important. There’s more to gain at the field than at the feast, or so he thinks. And so he declines, “Please have me excused” (Lk. 14:18). He treats the Lord’s messenger as nothing more than an inconvenient door-to-door salesman, and doesn’t for a moment stop to think that in declining the invitation he is declining eternal life. Likewise the second man thinks he has something more important at hand. He just bought five yoke of oxen. He’s riding that thrill of a new possession, the thrill that says, “Congratulations! You are a success, you’re on top of the world, nothing can pull you down, you’ll be riding high forever!” He follows that thrill away from the feast, not realizing that the thrill is lying to him, that the oxen will grow old and die, that he will grow old and die, and that no oxen in heaven, earth, or hell are strong enough to pull him up from the depths. The third man just married, and we might give him the most sympathy. But there should be no sympathy for valuing anything more highly than Christ. When Righteousness is calling, when the herald cries, “Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster,” (Joel 2:13), then, as it says in Joel 2, “Let the bridegroom go out from his chamber, and the bride from her dressing room” (Joel 2:16). You just got married? Great! Come to the Lord’s feast together. Get righteousness together. But don’t delude yourself into thinking that your honeymoon is heaven. There’s an actual heaven, and you get it through the righteousness of Jesus alone, so come to the feast!
The men don’t come. Their possessions, their pleasures have puffed them up such that they look down on the righteousness of Jesus and suppose they don’t need it. Maybe the Word of God is good for that man over there, but it doesn’t apply to them. Don’t fall into that trap. Don’t apply today’s reading to other people, but apply it to yourself, as it says in 1 Corinthians 11, “For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged” (1 Cor. 11:31). Coming to church regularly is a good habit. You could easily make the case that it is the best habit you could have. Such a habit doesn’t leave you wondering what you’re going to do on a Sunday morning. The decision to go to church becomes automatic, and that’s the safest way to go about life: when neither field nor oxen nor wife nor devil nor hell stand a chance of landing you anywhere other than in Christ’s sanctuary on Sunday morning. But being in the pew does not automatically guarantee that pride has been subdued or that you see your need for Christ’s righteousness rightly. It is perfectly possible to come to church and be full of yourself, and suppose you don’t need what Jesus offers here, and pay attention carelessly. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that you despise Jesus or that you’re simply going through the motions here. But Jesus is saying in today’s reading that while it’s easy to say, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” (Lk. 14:15), nevertheless, when the bread of the kingdom of God is right here in front of you, as it was in front of the man who exclaimed the blessing at the feast, take heed that you see that bread for what it is, that you see your need for the Gospel, your need for Jesus, that you value His Gospel rightly, far above all the stuff of earth and the pride of life.
If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll all confess, even the lifelong Christians, that we don’t feel our unrighteousness as we ought, that we don’t feel our need for Christ’s righteousness as we ought, that we know all too well what the guy with the field felt, and that, while we know the Pharisees are the bad guys, there’s a little proud Pharisee in every one of us. We should take to heart that “the master of the house became angry” (Lk. 14:21), and recognize that we deserve nothing but the wrath of God. At the same time we find great comfort in our Lord’s earnestness and desire for our salvation. The first man had said, “I must go out and see it,” or literally, “I have a compulsion to go out and see it.” Well, our Lord knows that we suffer from such compulsions because of our sinful flesh, compulsions that would compel us away from him and toward idols, and He does not stand there spectating as other things would compel us away from Him, but He compels in turn, as He says, “Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in” (Lk. 14:23).
The Lord does not compel us with brute force, but by opening our eyes with His Word. If we’re going to see the need for His righteousness, then we must become aware of our own unrighteousness, and Jesus gives us this knowledge of ourselves through the preaching of His Law. The Law shows us not merely that we all have our struggles or no one’s perfect, but the Law of God shows that you are rotten to the core, that there is no one righteous, no, not one, that you have sinned against your Maker, that sin merits eternal wrath, and that of yourself you are bound for hell. When you are aware of your sins and your conscience torments you, then there is no more welcome word in the world than, “Come, for everything is now ready.” The devil take my field, I’m going to church!
And then when we come to the feast we find the table laid with the hearty bread of the forgiveness of sins, with the rich wine of eternal life, with the meat of Christ’s righteousness, and our empty stomachs rush to it, and our weary bodies recline at table and rest, and our terrified consciences find their only peace, the peace of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. This more than anything wins our hearts, and makes us willing to take the last place, to be called poor, maimed, lame, blind, to associate with the lowly, to see our unrighteousness, because Jesus does not leave us unrighteous, but makes us righteous with His own righteousness. He says, “I forgive you all your sins,” and those words make you rejoice that Jesus speaks and applies His Word not merely to others, but to you. May the Lord grant you ever-increasing delight in hearing His Word, and stir up your desire for the feast of His Gospel. Amen.