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In the name of Jesus, amen. Dear Saints, our Lord Jesus is invited to this dinner at the Pharisees’ house, and he is going to take the occasion to go right after these Pharisees. I mean, he just lays into them. He goes after their legalism. He goes after their pride. He goes after their selfishness. And it’s all laid out here before us.
And I think you’re thinking right now, this is great because I know a couple Pharisees I’d like to get after this week, too. This will be really helpful. I’ll just store this in my back pocket, and when I come across those guys, I’ll be ready for them. But the Holy Spirit does not have this here so that we can then go off in self-righteousness, but to recognize, first of all, that all of us also have this little Pharisee that lives in our own heart, the little monk that has residence in our own conscience, and that all of us are by default programmed to think and to act like Pharisees. It’s like the default religious operating system of our own fallen, sinful nature.
And we normally think of the flesh as that sinful part of us that motivates wrong, sinful, wicked actions and thoughts and deeds and desires. And sure enough, it is. But the flesh has kind of a socially acceptable good side. That’s the Pharisee side. It thinks like this: well, look, if God is mad at me because of my sinfulness, then he’ll be happy with me when I get it all sorted out. If God’s wrath is manifested on sin, then surely God’s happiness and smile is given out to those who are obedient and good. And so that Pharisee starts to live a life of its own. So we need to hear these words ourselves.
I’d say, I want to say it like this: that Jesus is going after the three chief characteristics of our sinful flesh: our legalism, our pride, and our selfishness. First is the legalism, and this happens when they all are gathered for the feast, and into the midst of the feast comes a man who’s sick, is swollen, is a swelling disease. Jesus, he doesn’t just… he sees the man and he has compassion on the man, and he’s going to heal the man and bless the man. But he doesn’t just do it. He knows it’s the Sabbath day. And so there’s all these restrictions that the Pharisees had built up around the Sabbath day so that they wouldn’t work on the Sabbath day, so that they could consider themselves holy according to the law.
And so Jesus, seeing the man who needs healing and knowing what he’s going to do, and seeing the Pharisees who he knows are going to be offended by it, looks at him first before he heals him and he says, “Tell me, is it lawful to heal a man on the Sabbath day?” There weren’t laws about that. Just because nobody can heal. So there weren’t laws about not doing miracles on the Sabbath day that kind of wouldn’t really apply to anyone but Jesus. But there were plenty of other laws. In fact, the Pharisees were kind of obsessed with it. It’s one of the marks of Phariseeism to be figuring out the Sabbath day.
And they would give themselves all sorts of little riddles about it and all sorts of rules. There was a certain amount of steps that you could take, and you could go no further, because if you… walking was fine, but you couldn’t be considered to go on a journey. So there was a Sabbath’s journey. It was just, you know, I don’t know, so many hundred yards. There were rules about everything. There were rules about where you could spit on the Sabbath day. You could spit on a rock, but not on the dirt. Because if you spit on the dirt, you might be watering a plant, and that counts as work.
There were big conversations about if you could walk in the rain on the Sabbath day, because if you walked in the rain and it rained on your clothes, then you would be carrying water, and that’s also considered work. Or you could maybe walk in the rain, but you had to take off your clothes before you went inside, because that would be carrying water inside. There were rules about… Here’s a tricky question. And this is the kind of stuff that the rabbis would try to sort out. They said, what would happen if you were… Say you were standing in your house and you were eating a plum, and you ate half of the plum, and then you were holding your hand outside the window when the sun went down, and the Sabbath started. Now you’re in a real pickle. Because you can’t drop it, because that would be planting a tree, and you can’t bring your hand inside, because that would be bringing food home, and so you’re stuck.
Yeah, I guess you have to stand there for 24 hours until then you can finish. I mean, it’s actually a pretty amazing thing that they were taking. But while it seems crazy to us to have all these kind of questions, the point of it is that the same sort of theological operating system is also at work in my heart and it’s also at work in your heart. It’s the calculation of how can I be righteous by the law? How can I do… how can I live in such a way that I can stand before God on the judgment day?
And it leads to this kind of legalism, where here are the rules for what to eat and what to wear and where to go and what to do, all with an attempt to justify yourself before God. Now Jesus comes into this legalism and just blows it up by his saving work. He asks this astonishing question: Is it… is it right to do miracles on the Sabbath day? And he does a miracle. And then he says this: “Which of you, if your son falls in a pit, doesn’t immediately rescue him on the Sabbath day? Or even if you have an ox or a pet and it falls into the pit, you immediately rescue them on the Sabbath day.” And they say nothing.
He is just getting after this legalism and he’s replacing it with faith in the Lord’s mercy. Now, don’t misunderstand. This is not saying that we should not strive to love God and serve God and serve our neighbor and keep the law as best we can. The opposite of legalism is not hedonism. The opposite of legalism is not do whatever you want, ism. The opposite of legalism is rejoicing in the grace of God and knowing that we stand before God not with our own works and our own efforts and our own obedience, but we stand before God with nothing but the blood of Jesus and his suffering and his death and his cross and his mercy and his promises. That is our only hope, our only salvation.
So Jesus, the first… strikes the first death blow to this little Pharisee that lives in us, is striking down this legalism with the grace and mercy of God. Then he goes after their pride. He does this by the parable of… and it’s not only a parable; it’s good instructions about what to do when you’re invited to a feast. Now, we have to be careful because I would say a lot of the times, maybe even most of the time that Jesus gives a parable, he’s not also giving practical instructions. Right? So the parable of the sower sowing seed is not instructions on how to be a good farmer. You’d never throw your seed in the rocks and stuff like that.
Or the parable of the stronger man who binds the strong man and loots his stuff is not instructions on how to cat burglar or whatever, steal someone’s stuff. But this parable actually turns out to be both a parable that reveals the mystery of the kingdom of God and also good advice. Jesus says, when you’re invited to a feast or a wedding or some official banquet, don’t go find the best seat for yourself and sit right up front. He says, if you do that, then they’re going to come in and see that someone more important than you is invited and they’re going to have to come and have this awkward conversation. “Hey, can you give up your seat for the person who’s better than you?” And you go sit in the corner. And then with shame, you go and take your place in the back.
Jesus said, don’t do that. When you go into the feast, you take the lowest seat, take the most humble seat. And then what will happen? I mean, one of two things in a wedding: one is that you’re sitting where you’re supposed to, and it’ll be great. Or the other is that the master of the feast will come in and they’ll see you sitting there and say, “Friends, what are you doing? Move up higher. Come sit by me. Move up higher.” So Jesus is giving us advice in sort of normal, helpful manners where we take our seats. But it’s more than that, too. There’s a profound spiritual reality that Jesus is teaching, and he’s trying to get after that pride that also exists in our flesh.
That thinks that we deserve something. That thinks too highly of ourselves. That wants to exalt ourselves and diminish other people around us. Jesus says that part of us has to die. To be part of the kingdom of God is a matter of humility and faith. Jesus says it like this: everyone who exalts himself ends up being humbled. But everyone who humbles himself is exalted. His eyes are on the humble. He exalts those of low decree. That’s how Mary teaches us to pray and to sing. So that that part of us, that fleshly part of us that wants to think so highly of ourselves has to be put to death.
And Jesus does it here so beautifully with this parable and with this promise. We humble ourselves so that legalism is replaced by grace and pride is replaced by humility. And then the third mark of our sinful flesh, our little Pharisee, is selfishness. This Jesus addresses when he turns to the man who invited him to the feast. And I do not know, you can help me with this. Let me know after the service how you read it. I do not know if this should be understood that Jesus speaks to him in a rebuke or that Jesus speaks to him peacefully. But he’s giving instructions, that’s for sure.
He goes to the man who had invited him, and he’s saying, “Hey, you did this wrong. When you have a banquet… don’t invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or your rich neighbors, lest they invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and then you’ll be blessed because they cannot repay you.” Now here’s the blessing that we can’t miss. The blessing comes in serving those who cannot repay us.
And then Jesus is going to give us even more wisdom here, which is hard. It’s very hard for me. I think it’s very hard for all of us. But Jesus is saying that our work and our service and our care for one another is not to have an eye on this life and to have an eye on the blessings of this life, but to have an eye on the life to come. You’re blessed because they can’t repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous. So that our thinking, our serving, our living, our acting is not to give ourselves a better life here, but rather we have an eye on the last day when the Lord returns in glory and sets up the new heaven and the new earth, where the righteous dwell, where we will live with him forever.
And all the things done in secret will then be repaid, not by the people that we were serving, but by the Lord himself who was pleased to be served through these things. And this unfurls our selfishness. There’s a sense in which we all, by nature, are sort of curled in on ourselves. The old theologians called this the insay curvatus. They say that we’re bent to look at ourselves and care for ourselves and be concerned with ourselves. We have an instinctive, navel-gazing sense to our own sinful flesh. It reminds me of the roly-polies when you grab them and they just kind of fump and curl up like this. This is how they are. This is what the Pharisees are doing.
Everything is calculated. “Well, if I invite that guy, that’ll be nice because I like the wine that he’s got in the basement and maybe he’ll invite me over next week and I’ll get a taste of it” or something like this. All that kind of calculus, all that kind of figuring, all that kind of sorting things out, all of that selfishness and self-concern is undone by the love of God in Christ. It unfurls us to finally be free to love and to suffer and to serve and to really care for people, knowing that the Lord cares for us.
Knowing, listen to this, that the Lord cares for you, and that he will not let you go hungry, that he will keep your life, and that he will reward you in the resurrection. So we’re free now to love and serve and invite people to the meal who won’t be able to invite us back. That’s, after all, what Jesus does. I mean, when he says when you have a banquet, invite the poor and the crippled and the lame and the blind, and you say to yourself, “Well, that seems exactly like what the Lord does when he has a supper.” He invites sinners, right? To come for forgiveness. He invites the weak to come for strength. He invites the poor to come and eat without cost, a meal of rich food that we couldn’t even imagine: his body and his blood and the promise of his mercy and his love for us.
This is how Jesus hosts us. And feasting on his mercy and delighting in his love and knowing his kindness and having confidence in his promise and the forgiveness of sins. Now we’re free from these things. Now, it’s a painful operation, the kind of crucifixion of our sinful flesh. Putting to death the little Pharisee and this little legalist and this little prideful, selfish thing that lives inside each of us. But look at how mercifully the Lord does this operation so that he can give us his love, so that he can exalt us in due time, so that he can invite us to his feast. So may God grant us the repentance and the faith in him to know our own sin and to know his great mercy and love of God in Christ. May God grant it for Christ’s sake. Amen. The peace of God which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.