The Parable of the Great Banquet

Reading - Luke 14:15-24

What has happened before

As we saw in the earlier verses of chapter 14, Jesus was at a prominent pharisees house invited to a banquet where he was not, in reality, one of the honored guests. He was 'closely watched', for the purpose of seeing him say or do something that his enemies could use against him.

We saw that he spoke and reproved / admonished / took to task both the guests and the host of the banquet.

He said to the guests that they must look humbly at themselves and not fight over the most honored seats. v11 "For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted".

To the host Jesus said that if they wished to be blessed by God, they should not invite those who can repay back the invitation, but those who cannot - the poor, the cripple, the lame and the blind. And their blessing will come at the 'resurrection of the righteous' v14

Jesus turns the table of scrutiny

It is clear that the thrust of Jesus' words was not to teach proper social etiquette. What he is teaching is not in the same vein as "sit up straight", or "take your elbows off the table", or "don't slurp your soup", or "don't burp out loud".

Jesus instead is using the social occasion to teach them about humility and grace and compassion. Instead of being the subject of their scrutiny, Jesus turns the table and challenges them to scrutinize themselves: are they living the form of humility and grace and compassion that God would bless?

By any measure both the host and the guests fighting for the most favored seats were found wanting. Instead of humility they were self-deceived in their pride; instead of grace and compassion - elitism ('eleet-tism').

How would you react?

I wonder what your reaction would be if you heard such a message?

Here you are in a
social gathering, a feast, with perhaps your closest friends or even
enemies, hoping to enjoy time with them and perhaps, for a bit of sport, the humiliation of such a man as this Nazarene preacher. Did he really think he belonged here?

But instead he forces you to look at yourself, challenging not only your place at that feast, but your place at the greater feast, the feast in the Kingdom of God. This Jesus forces the issue as an issue of the heart - what is your real motivation? pride? acceptance and admiration by your peers? Jesus tells you that you should not do anything out of self-interest. Instead, he says, you must look at others as better than yourself; look at others not for what they can give back, but what you can give them.

What would your reaction be?

One guest reacts

One guest did react. He said: "Blessed is the man who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God" (v15).

Who was this man? We don't know, the bible doesn't say. Maybe he was one of the host's family or friends. Maybe he was another one like Jesus who were invited there to be 'carefully watched'.  What we can state with a great degree of confidence is that this man was a jew.

Why did he say what he said? We don't know for sure what his motivation was. The bible doesn't say what else this man said; nor convey the tone or the manner with which he said this, so its hard to determine why he said it at all.

Perhaps he was just filling in the awkward silence that would have followed Jesus' reproof.

Perhaps he thought to remind Jesus (and at the same time put this itinerant Nazarene rabbi in His place) that as a Jew he was guaranteed such a blessing in God's table. Maybe.

But it is also possible that whoever he may have been, he agreed with Jesus and was voicing out his agreement. That finally, here, this man understood what such blessing from God means. Indeed: "(Tremendously) blessed are those who will eat at the feast in the Kingdom of God!" This was after all a plain and acknowledged truth even in that time. They would all have been familiar with the banquet of God mentioned in Isaiah 25:6-9 which is a victorious event where God prepares a feast "for all peoples (all nations, cultures)" and where God will "swallow up death forever" and "wipe away all tears from all faces" and "remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth". Blessed are they indeed that find themselves at that table.

Jesus drives home the message of God's Grace and Compassion

And so in a sense Jesus follows on with this man's statement, but subjects it to further scrutiny so as to give an answer both to those who were wondering if they had that privilege, and to those who were self-assured that they already had that privilege.

And the answer, in the form of the parable of the great banquet, is this: It is God who grants the invitation to whomever He pleases; no man enters the kingdom of God apart from God's undeserved favor - that which we call Grace.

The parable - summarized and analyzed

And as we read, the parable goes like this: a man invites many people to a feast but at the time of the feast, the bible says "they all alike began to make excuses". They all backed out! Now a little bit of context here: these people knew they were invited, and knew it early enough to accept it, which they did. When the man sends out his servant, it was a second time as is the custom in the Middle East (v17 "Come - Gk 'Keep coming'). Today we send invitations and put, more often than not, RSVP (French: reply please). This is important so that we can prepare sufficient food for our guests. So it was in the Middle East, and in that culture and in that time, confirming which guest was coming was even more important. Not only did they need to know to prepare the right amount of food, but to avoid wasting expensive, costly food. So to back out is not socially appropriate after you've already said you would come.

But we note from the passage that the host was angered by these guests backing out. And we can see why, because all the excuses given by the invited guests were obvious lies. In the M.E. it is not the practice that one would buy a field without first examining it thoroughly - know where the wells and springs are, where the boundaries are, and what the rainfall was like. Only after you were satisfied with the land would you buy it - and yet the first guest says he has bought a field that he now needs to examine. Same with the second guest who said he needed to 'try out' a new team of oxen he had already bought. This just was not the practice at the time. And the third guest stating he had just gotten married had no real excuse - in a tight-knit community everyone knew when marriages happened and celebrated, and such an occasion would not have been scheduled at a time that conflicted with another banquet.

All these guests basically insulted the host with obvious lies. Now to see the magnitude of such an insult we need to understand that in the M.E. a banquet such as this is meant to celebrate an important transition/transformation; such feasts celebrate a change in social status of a person with another. For example through such feasts strangers are transformed into guests; enemies into friends; and as we see in the parable of the prodigal son - rebellious sons restored back to their status.

What these guests rejected was not merely food; but the honor that the host was conferring upon them. This is why the host was very angry.

So the host instead confers that honor on the undesirables: the poor, the blind, the lame and the cripple. And still there was room, so he confers the same honor to aliens, people found on the roads and country lanes. He does this so that his house would be full.

The Parable of the Banquet - how it was understood by Jesus' audience

This parable, told by Jesus after someone says "blessed is the man who will eat at the feast of the Kingdom of God", would have been clearly understood by those who heard it as referring to the Messianic feast of the age to come. They also would have understood of whom Jesus spoke about through the parable.

Those who were invited and rejected the invitation at the last minute (and as a result greatly angered the host) symbolized the leaders of Israel: the pharisees and the teachers of the law; those who knew God (by head knowledge) and His invitation yet did not consider them as valuable.

The poor, the blind, the lame and the crippled symbolized the undesirables, the lost sheep of Israel. It was to these that Jesus sent his disciples in Matt 10:5-8 with the instructions: "Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. As you go, preach this message: 'The kingdom of heaven is near.' Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy,^[a]drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give."

And finally those who were invited from the roads and the country lanes symbolize the gentiles - all those who are non-jews. Us.

Those who heard this knew that Jesus was saying there is no privilege in the presence of God apart from those that God grants. And God will grant this privilege to whomever he pleases. That, which we call today as God's grace. And God is pleased to call anyone, regardless of their qualification or disqualification, to His feast.

In the day of God's feast all these people who did not deserve to be invited will instead be honored by God and celebrated by God. On that day they will have completed their transformation and they will have the right to sit with God and eat with Him and enjoy his favor. And who here would not want to enjoy God's favor? To be called God's friend and child instead of His enemy?

The Invitation is by Grace

Again what we get from this parable is that no one enters the kingdom of God without God's invitation. And that invitation is by grace. If we today have a saving relationship with God, it is because God invited us even though we were poor or crippled or lame or blind or had no rightful claim to the feast. And if we today recognize in our hearts the deep longing for this same saving relationship with God, then the same invitation is being extended to us. God wishes that his house be full, and guess what - Jesus parable ends with the invitation being sent out, not with the celebration of the feast because you know what, the invitation is still being sent out and people like you and me are still being called in.

Now a question that I want to end with is this: what then does God expect of his children to do with this privilege? Our brother Marbuen will pick that question up and answer it in his message later on.

The Lord's Supper as a foretaste of God's Banquet

Here in Punchbowl we celebrate the Lord's supper and as we are in the middle point of our series of messages on 'Building each other up in life and ministry', it is appropriate that we take the time now to celebrate the Lord's supper as an avenue for practically applying what we have learned so far. We understand that it is God that is in control both in the invitation into His family, and in keeping us in his family.

Normally our Lord Supper celebration follows a certain format: someone comes up here and leads us into the supper. But that format removes the kind of communal experience that is suppose to be present at a feast. So today we're going to do this a little bit differently.

The Lord's supper is a foretaste of the feast in the Kingdom of God. It serves to remind us of what Jesus did on the cross that resulted in our salvation by grace, and reminds us that we have a living hope and living reward that is set aside for us until the completion of the coming of the kingdom of God. At its core the Lord's Supper is a form of testimony and like any testimony its effect is to encourage and build up. It builds us up by reminding us that our status and hope and future and sustenance is in, through and from God alone.

So where you are on your tables we would like to ask you to share the bread and juice together. But before you do so, we want to give you the opportunity to build each other up through the sharing of your testimony. Share your prayer points, your joys and your struggles. To guide you in your sharing, ask yourself one or both of these questions:

1. What times in my life so far have I been really humbled and have come to God recognizing he is sovereign?
2. What times in my life have I experience God's grace and compassion?
3. What times in my life have I realized that I am completely reliant upon God to keep me, hold me and uphold me?

Then after your sharing time, break bread together and share your drink as a reminder of Jesus' death.

Then we will call you together so we can continue the rest of our service.