PARABLES OF CHRIST
THE BANQUET INVITATIONS
DR. JIM DIXON
LUKE 14:7-14
MARCH 14, 1999
In 1990, insufficient sleep syndrome was added to the international classification of sleep disorders. According to the American Medical Association, 70 million Americans suffer from insufficient sleep syndrome. Seventy million men and women in this nation simply are not getting enough sleep. This means that there is a whole lot of drowsiness out there. There are drowsy people in their automobiles, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration tells us that thousands of Americans fall asleep at the wheel of their car every year, resulting in thousands of fatal accidents—38,000 deaths per year are attributed directly to insufficient sleep syndrome.
There are drowsy people at work, a lot of drowsiness at work, and we are told that this has resulted in the loss of billions of dollars from the American economy simply because of the lack of productivity due to insufficient sleep syndrome. There are drowsy people, of course, at school, drowsy students. There are drowsy people at church, and maybe a few of you feel a little bit drowsy this morning. According to Dr. Max Herskowitz of the Baylor School of Medicine in Texas, we can blame it all on the Industrial Revolution. He tells us that the Industrial Revolution changed the lifestyle of the western world. It changed the pace of life. It changed the stress of life. Suddenly there didn’t seem to be enough hours in the days.
In 1910, Americans averaged 9 hours of sleep per day. In 1998, Americans averaged 7 hours of sleep per day. According to Dr. Herskowitz, it’s not possible for somebody to adapt to less sleep than they need. He tells us that most Americans are laboring under an illusion that they can adapt to fewer hours of sleep, but all they’re really adapting to is a lower amount of energy. All they’re really adapting to is a lower measure of alertness. Indeed, according to Dr. Herskowitz, millions of Americans really don’t know what it’s like to be fully energized or fully awake.
Now, the Bible tells us that God is never drowsy. The Bible says the God of Israel never slumbers and never sleeps. To the people of Christ, the Bible says, “Be alert. Be sober. Be watchful.” The Greek words are “egeiro,” “eknepho,” “gregoreuo,” and sometimes “agrupneo.” These words collectively convey the message to the church of Christ, “Wake up! There’s no room for spiritual drowsiness. Be alert. Be spiritually attentive.”
Jesus taught in parables. He complained that many people “had eyes to see and could not see, and ears to hear and could not hear.” This morning Christ teaches us a parable and it is so important, and He wants us to have ears to hear. He wants us to hear. He wants us to seek for a few minutes to be alert. These two messages from this little parable relate to the way that Christ wants us to live in this world as Christians, as believers in Him.
First of all, Christ wants us to live lives of humility. This is the first message from this parable of The Banquet Invitations. Christ wants us to be a humble people. He says, “He who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Most of you have heard of Harry Houdini. Harry Houdini died in 1926 at the age of 52. He was an internationally known illusionist, a world-famous escapologist. He issued a standing challenge to all the prisons of the world that he could escape from any prison cell or any jail cell in one hour’s time, the only stipulations being that he would be allowed to enter the cell with his street clothes and whatever he carried in his pockets, and that no one would watch him as he made his escape.
Well, in Great Britain, there was a city which had a prison and they proudly announced that they had an escape-proof cell. They took up the challenge of Harry Houdini. They invited him to England. They paid his way. Houdini made his way to that prison, and he was put within the cell and the door was closed. He immediately began to work. He had many different tools that he carried in his garments. He tried to release the lock. He could not. The minutes passed, and he became more and more frustrated as he tried to trip the lock, but he could not do it, not matter what tool he used.
Finally, after two hours, he had failed miserably. He had gone way over the allotted time, and he sat down in exhaustion. He leaned back hard against the door of the cell, and suddenly that heavy door, as he fell against it, that heavy door began to move. It began to move just slightly and slowly. Suddenly, it was at that moment that Harry Houdini realized he’d been tricked. He’d been tricked by that town. He’d been tricked by the authorities at the prison. The reason he could not release the lock was because it had already been released. The reason he could not trip the lock was because it had already been tripped. He had spent two hours in that cell believing he was locked in when, in truth, he could have just pushed against the door and walked out. Now, he was deceived.
The Bible tells us that there is a deceiver in this world whose name is Satan. He is called the deceiver in the Bible. He would deceive even the elect, the Bible says, if it were possible. He is a trickster. He loves to put people in bondage. He loves to put the people of the world in bondage. He loves to make Christian men and women think they are in bondage. He loves to make Christian men and women believe that they are in bondage to this sin or that sin, that they are in bondage to this addiction or that addiction. Of course, the Bible tells us that if we are truly Christians, if we really have Christ in our heart, then we are never truly in bondage. The door is never truly locked. The door may be very heavy. It may be hard to move. It may take a lot of prayer. It may take a lot of counseling. It may take a lot of Christian therapy, but the power of Christ in you can move that door. The door is never locked for the Christian.
Satan is a deceiver, and he not only wants to deceive us with regard to sin and bondage, but he wants to deceive us in other ways as well. He wants to deceive you with regard to philosophy of life. The Bible tells us that Satan has sold three philosophies to the world—the philosophy of materialism, the philosophy of hedonism, and the philosophy of ascensionism. The Bible says, in the little book of 1 John, “Do not love the world or the things that are in the world, for if anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life are not of the Father but is of the world, and the world passes away and the desires of it, but he who does the will of God abides forever.”
The lust of the eyes represent materialism, the philosophy of materialism. The lust of the flesh, hedonism and the philosophy of hedonism. The pride of life, ascensionism and everything related to it. Now, Satan has told the world that materialism will bring fulfillment. You can find fulfillment through the accumulation of wealth. Satan has told the world that hedonism will bring satisfaction. You can find satisfaction if you will gratify your desires. You can find satisfaction through the pursuit of pleasure. Of course, ascensionism, Satan has sought to sell ascensionism to the world, that you can find success, true success, if you will just exalt yourself.
When you go back in the Bible to Isaiah, chapter 14, and Ezekiel, chapter 28, you get there a glimpse of the fall of Satan at the dawn of time. Now, that first passage is actually directed to the King of Babylon, and the second passage to the King of Tyre. These evil kings and their evil kingdoms represent, most evangelical scholars agree, the prince of darkness himself. We get a glimpse of how he fell. Though he was the signet of perfection, he corrupted his wisdom for the sake of his splendor. He said in his heart, “I shall ascend above the stars of God. I will set my throne on high. I will make myself like the most high god.” That was the mindset of Satan when he fell, when he was cast out of heaven. He has come to earth, the Bible says, and with a legion of fallen angels he seeks to deceive the nations. He has sold this philosophy of pride and self-ascension to the nation. Self-exaltation.
He said to Adam and Eve, “You can be like God!” All over this world we see people seeking to exalt themselves in their relationships, seeking to exalt themselves socially, seeking to exalt themselves corporately, people seeking exaltation.
Into this world came Jesus Christ. Christ came into the world. He had a whole different philosophy, antithetical to the world’s philosophy because the world has been impacted by the prince of this world, the archon of this world who is Satan. Jesus gave the world a philosophy of humility and service. Rather than exalting ourselves, He told us to exalt others. Jesus said, “You know how the rulers of the nations love to lord it over them, and their great men love to exercise authority over them. It shall not be so amongst you. He who would be the greatest among you must be the servant of all, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but rather to serve and give His life, a ransom for many.” That was a new philosophy.
Jesus wants us to practice humility in the daily events of life. In this little parable, we’re told how Jesus was invited to the home of a Pharisee. This Pharisee, Luke calls him a “ruling Pharisee” or a “ruler of the Pharisees.” He was probably a member of the Sanhedrin, the ruling counsel of the Jews. He was a prominent man. Jesus noted how all the people invited tried to take places of honor, seeking to exalt themselves. Jesus said, “When you are invited to a feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest a person more imminent than you be invited, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Make place for him,’ and you will begin with shame to move to the lowest place. When you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, and when your host comes, he may say to you, “Friend, move up higher” and you will be honored in the presence of all who are table with, for he who exalts himself will be humbled but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
In the Jewish world, and indeed in the Roman world at the time of Christ, when people were invited to dinners, they sat on triclinium. Tricliniums were couches. The word “tri” means three and “klinidion” comes from a word which means “to recline.” Tricliniums were couches that held three people. When people ate, they reclined on these couches. The triclinium were arranged around a large table in the shape of a “U” and the position of greatest honor was at the base of the U. That’s where the host sat. That’s where this ruler of the Pharisees would have sat, at the base of the U, in the middle of that triclinium. To his right and left would be the seats of highest honor, and then the triclinium to the right and left would be the next in honor, and so on around the U. I mean there was a different status attached to different seating positions. People just arrived. They didn’t have name tags. Some people, instead of waiting to be seated by the host just went and took the positions of honor. Jesus saw this and He rebuked them.
He tells us in all things in life we are to practice humility. We are to humble ourselves. We may be exalted by men if we do this or we may not, but we can know this, we will be exalted by God. The Bible says, “Humble yourselves unto the mighty hand of God, that in due time He may exalt you. God opposes the crowd, but God gives grace to the humble.”
And so, there is this first message to us as we live our lives in this world, that we are to practice humility, and rather than exalting ourselves, we are to seek to exalt others and the blessing of God will come to us if we practice humility. And yet it’s a rare virtue, but it is central to the call of Christ upon His people.
There’s a second teaching in this little parable and it concerns hospitality. Jesus said to the man who invited Him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your kinsmen or your rich neighbors less they invite you in return and you be repaid. When you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame and the blind, and you will be blessed because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection, the just.”
Here Jesus is talking about hospitality. We need to understand that he is not saying that we should not have dinner with our friends. Jesus Himself had dinner with His friends, and the Bible tells us time and again that He ate at the home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus. They were His friends, and certainly He enjoyed meals with them. Jesus is not telling us to not share meals with our friends. He’s simply talking about hospitality and what it means to reach out to those who are hurting. The poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind represented the lowest segment of Jewish society, the lowest segment. Jesus is here telling us that we are to reach out to the lowest segment of society, and we are to show hospitality towards them.
The biblical word for hospitality is the word “philoxenia” or “philoxenos.” This word literally means “love of strangers.” But as it is used in the Bible, it doesn’t refer simply to the love given to any stranger but rather to a stranger in need. I mean the word philoxenos was virtually always used of giving love or showing love to a stranger in need. This is what Christ is calling upon us to do, to love strangers in need.
Many years ago, Billy Graham held a crusade in Los Angeles at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. I was there. I was a teenager, but I was serving as a counselor. There was a newspaper reporter who asked Billy Graham a question. He said, “Your crusade is something of a controversy here in Los Angeles. Some members of the clergy do not agree with your method of evangelism and with your practice of crusades. As pastor recently said to me that you have set the church back fifty years or perhaps a hundred years.” Billy Graham thought for a moment, and he said, “Well if that is true, I need to apologize to the Lord, because before I came here, I prayed that the church would be set back 2,000 years.”
There’s brilliance in what Billy Graham said because the church of Christ in the first century had a great love of God and a great love of people, and it shook the foundations of the world. The church of Christ, as we enter the 2l8t century, needs to be a little bit more like the church of Christ was in the first century. The church of Christ in the first century had a very passion for hospitality. Christians were known as those who reached out in love to strangers in need. That’s how the church was known. That’s how the church of Christ needs to be today. We need to be known for our compassion, and indeed the gospel of Christ loses power when it is not coupled with love and compassion.
Recent data from the Barna Research Group tells us that 75% of the people of America, three out of every four people in America, believe that Christianity is losing its influence in this culture. Three out of every four Americans believe Christianity is losing its influence. If that is true, and I believe it is, maybe part of the reason it is true is simply because we’ve lost our love. We’ve lost our compassion. We’ve lost our passion to reach out to the poor and the afflicted and the hurting and to all of those who are in need. The Barna Research Group conducted a study of Christians and non-Christians and examined their lifestyles in 65 different categories, and do you know what they found? No difference. No difference between the lifestyles of Christians and non-Christians in 65 categories. How can that be if we are to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world? We should live differently than the world lives, morally and in terms of hospitality and compassion and love. We need to be different.
I think most of you have been to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. and you have seen The White House, that 132-room mansion which sits on 18 beautifully sculpted acres. Every president in American history has lived in The White House with the exception of one, and that one was George Washington. John Adams lived in The White House and Thomas Jefferson, but George Washington never lived in The White House. However, it was George Washington who chose the site, and it was George Washington who chose the architect, and it was George Washington who poured his time and his energy into the building of that place, knowing that it would not be for himself, but it would be for others, knowing that he would never live in it, that he would serve out his term in office before it would be completed.
They began construction of The White House in 1792. Well, you see, Washington labored on a house that he knew he would never own, labored on a house he knew he would never live in. The odds are that we’re not likely to have a future president in this room. I mean it would be wonderful. You never know, but there’s a sense in which we can be like the first president was. I mean there’s a sense in which you can labor on a house you’ll never own, and you can labor on a house you’ll never live in.
We have a ministry we support here called Mission Ministries. That ministry works in Juarez, Mexico, and it is headed up by two people who are members of this church, Ed Bullis and Gary Fields. They take teams of people down to Mexico. We support them. Their salaries are not paid entirely by us, and, of course, they need the support of people everywhere, but they take mission teams down to Mexico. You can go down there, and you can see people who are poor and impoverished, and you can build a house, you can work on a house you’ll never own, and you’ll never live in but someone else will own it and someone else will live in it, and you can do it in the name of Christ. It’s one of the most wonderful things you could ever do.
Our elder board, years ago, went down to Mexico to build a house, and we’re going down again this May. We do not ask you to do things that we ourselves are unwilling to do, but we’re asking you, as we’ve often asked you, to be people of compassion, to find a way to reach out to the poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind and the lowest segments of society.
We support a ministry in this church called the Westside Community Builders. Through that ministry, you can go into the inner city of Denver, and you can remodel a house. You can remodel a house that you’ll never own, and you’ll never live in, but it will be a house that a poor person from an inner-city church will be able to live in. How wonderful is that? It’s what Jesus is talking about in this parable.
We have a ministry in this church called Manna Ministries. Every week, we reach out to hundreds and thousands of poor people, and we need your support. Not simply financially but we need your time, and it’s a chance to do what Jesus called us to do to show hospitality. This is the call of Christ on His people, to be humble and to be hospitable.
You know, I read recently the story of a man named Eduardo Sierra, and with this we’ll close. Eduardo Sierra was born in Spain. He is by blood a Spaniard, though he lives today in Hamburg, Germany. In the fall of 1996, Eduardo Sierra took a business trip to Stockholm, Sweden. As he was there, he had some free time, and he decided that he wanted to pray and find a place where he could pray so he began to look for a Christian church where he could just go in and find some time to himself and pray. He found an old Catholic church, the only church he found open.
He went into that old Catholic church, and nobody was in it. There was a casket waiting in state with the body of an elderly man, but nobody was there. By the casket, there was a condolence book. Eduardo could not help but notice that nobody had signed the book, not a single name in that book. He was kind of moved with compassion for this elderly man who had died and the fact that nobody had come and signed this book of condolences. He knelt by the casket, and he prayed for this deceased man, and he prayed for this man’s family, whoever they might be. He prayed for this man’s relatives, that somehow God would comfort them and bless them. He spent a little while there. He signed the book of condolences, and he put his address there as the book instructed him to do.
After he finished his business in Stockholm, he returned to Hamburg, Germany. It was there, three weeks later, that he received a phone call from government officials in Sweden. They congratulated him on being a millionaire. He said, “Well, what do you mean?” They said, “Well, this casket that was in the church you visited, in that casket, there was a 73-year-old man, Jen Svenson, and he was a multimillionaire, and he had no family. His will instructed that the first person to sign that book of condolences would receive everything he had, and you are a multimillionaire. It’s all going to you.” It turns out that Eduardo Sierra was the only person who signed that book, not only the first person but the only one.
Well, we all know life just doesn’t normally work like that. I mean isn’t that true? Things just don’t normally work like that. You do an act of kindness, you do something kind of loving, you normally are not compensated in this life. If you are compensated in this life, it’s usually not in a material fashion. But, you see, Jesus instructs us in this little parable to do acts of kindness and to express acts of service with no thought of reciprocity in this life, with no thought of getting repaid by man, to just perform loving acts out of the goodness of your heart and the love of Christ.
There is, as we have seen in other parables, a reciprocity that will come on that day when we arrive at heaven’s gates, and we will be repaid, all of us who love Christ and have come to Him in faith and by grace received His salvation. We will be rewarded there. We will be rewarded as Jesus says in this little parable at the resurrection of the just. We are not just be our own actions. The righteousness, the “dikaios,” the righteousness, the justice that is given to us is imputed upon us. It is the righteousness of Christ, and we’ve been clothed in those white robes we’ve mentioned before. We’re called to live as He lived and to love as He loved, and the rewards will come, maybe in this life by His hand, but certainly in the life to come and He wants us to know that.
So, from this little parable, a lesson on humility and a lesson on hospitality. Let’s close with a word of prayer.