Vicar
Matt Luetke Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
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Luke 14:1,7-14
One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house
of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched.
7 When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honor at the table, he
told them this parable: 8 “When
someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a
person more distinguished than you may have been invited. 9 If so, the host who invited both of
you will come and say to you, ‘Give this man your seat.’ Then, humiliated, you
will have to take the least important place. 10 But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that
when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’
Then you will be honored in the presence of all your fellow guests. 11 For everyone who exalts himself will
be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
12 Then Jesus said to his
host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your
brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you
back and so you will be repaid. 13
But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the
blind, 14 and you will be
blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection
of the righteous.”
Christians
Find Confidence in Humble Living Luke
14:1,7-14
I. Pride Looks for Confidence
in Earthly Rewards
II. Humility Finds Confidence in
Justification
I was listening to a Christian radio station in town, and I heard some
very unchristian advice. The station
was having their fund raising week and the host of the program told the story
of a man who just gave $500. This man
needed $5000 and was certain that God would give it to him, since he had
already paid a 10% offering on the money in advance. The host said that this man’s behavior was an example and an
inspiration to all who hoped to receive anything from God.
I wonder if a couple months from now that man will get his $5000 or
not. How do you think this would affect
the man’s faith? If he doesn’t receive
the money, he will wonder why God hasn’t paid him back and what else he has to
do in order to please God. On the other
hand, if he does receive the $5000, he will think to himself, “Ha! God must really be pleased with me! Look how he blesses me for the good that I
do!” Sadly, this man’s thought process
isn’t that uncommon. Many people think
God shows us his approval by giving us earthly rewards. These people end us serving just to get
rewarded. Yet if they are rewarded, it may only persuade them that their sinful
attitude was actually right. This would
only increase their sinful self-confidence.
The Pharisees were tempted by pride. They were confident that God was pleased
with their good behavior. Listen to how
they prayed. “God, I thank you that I am
not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax
collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I
get.” Can you imagine the big smile on
the Pharisee’s face as he speaks this prayer?
But where’s the joy? There is no
reason for it in this prayer! All we
see in it is the pride in his heart. At
dinner in the house of a prominent Pharisee we see how this pride was put into
action. Jesus noticed how they “…picked
the places of honor at the table”. The
Pharisees didn’t even wait for someone to invite them to take the seats of
honor—they just took them. They didn’t
think this was wrong because they had confidence that their good actions
deserved these seats of high honor.
Matthew records for us in his gospel that the Pharisees “…love[d] the
place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they
love[d] to be greeted in the marketplaces and to have men call them
‘Rabbi.’” By their actions we see their
pride.
If we place our confidence in ourselves, then it
will only lead to our destruction. This
is because of the underlying sin of pride.
Pride breaks the First Commandment.
God commands us to have no other gods but pride makes us into our own
gods. It says is Proverbs, ‘Pride goes
before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall’. The Pharisees thought they could exalt themselves with their
pride but God says pride leads to destruction.
Here we have a contradiction. The Pharisees say you can exalt yourself by
proudly lifting yourself up. Jesus
says, “[E]veryone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles
himself will be exalted.” Jesus says
that the way to get what pride wants is the very opposite of what pride is. Yet despite what God says, the Pharisee’s
way actually worked. They took the
seats of honor and they got them… But
only for five minutes. Once the host
comes in, he will say, ‘Get out of those seats, a more honorable person is
coming. Shoo! Make room!’ Here the contradiction falls apart. The Pharisee’s way may work, but only for a
couple minutes. God’s way always works.
At this point our sinful hearts may
think that if pride doesn’t lift us up but humility does, then this is what we
will do. We will do whatever it is God
commands just so long as it benefits us.
But we can’t obey God and still try to serve ourselves. This is just another lie pride likes to tell
us. These lies will make us lose all
common sense. Look at these
Pharisees. They believed pride’s lie
that the way to be exalted is to do the exalting yourself. They concluded that if no one invites you to
take the honorable seats, then take them yourself. How is this sensible? They
will lose those seats when the host comes in and tells them to move. They believed the lies their pride told them
and lost all common sense. The man on
the radio also believed the lies. He
thought God would reward his good works in proportion to how much he gave. Think about it, if his logic was right, then
we could give every penny we ever earned to God and multiply our earnings by
10! If this were true, who wouldn’t be
a Christian? Sadly, simply knowing the
ways of God does not stop us from losing all common sense if we still hold onto
pride.
Our sinful natures combine pride and
humility to come up with this hybrid thing I call false humility. A good way to understand false humility is
to look at the political campaigns going on right now. The politicians promise to sign bills into laws
that will help small businesses. They
cry out about the need to keep jobs in America. They promise welfare reform to the poor and cheap prescription
drugs to the elderly. They seem to have
our welfare in mind, and some of them may, but there is a temptation for them
to make these promises merely to get our votes and not because they truly care
about us.
Humility without the proper motivation is just
another way that we try to manipulate others to get what we want. Pride says to itself, I will be humble like
God commands, but I will also serve myself by snatching up whatever treasures I
can get by manipulating others with my humility. But we cannot serve two masters.
We can either serve our pride, or we can serve our God. There is no middle ground. If our pride remains then we cannot have
genuine humility. And if we can’t do
what is right, we remain under the thumb of God’s wrath.
How then, can we ever really be humble? If we only listen to what Jesus told the
invited guests at dinner, then we will never know. Jesus only told them the law, which convicts us of not being humble
yet gives no comfort that sincere humility is even possible.
Let’s keep on listening to Jesus and see what he has
to say to the host. The host was a
Pharisee himself—a prominent Pharisee, who you might think was just as lost as
the rest of the Pharisees, but we see from what Jesus tells him that something
is different about him. Jesus said to
the host, “[if you act humbly towards the poor] you will be blessed. Although
they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
This statement is startling because it implies an amazing thing about
the host. In order for him to be repaid
at the resurrection of the righteous, he must have met God’s standard for
getting to heaven; and the only way that his humble service could be worthy of
eternal rewards is if it was perfect.
Are we dealing here with the best Pharisee ever? No, we are dealing with a man who was just
as proud as the rest of us. This man
however, had Jesus as his substitute.
Jesus lived a live free of pride in his place. The host was perfect because Jesus was his substitute. We also have Jesus as our substitute.
Here we have far more confidence—and joy—than pride
will ever be able to give. God
justified the world! A punishment was
deserved and a punishment was paid. The
world was guilty before God for breaking all of his laws. But Jesus took our sins on himself and put
his righteousness on us. Now, through
our faith in him, God looks at us and does not see our sins. He sees the perfect righteousness of his
Son.
We are no longer clueless as to what true humility
is—we have Jesus as our example. On the
way to the Pharisee’s house for supper Jesus gave us an example of true
humility. He and the Pharisees met a
man who had dropsy. This is a disease
that causes water to be retained in the body and cuts off circulation to
whatever part is infected. It also
happened to be the Sabbath day and no work was to be done. But Jesus healed that man, not caring about
what the Pharisees might think about him.
If Jesus wanted to look good in the eyes of the Pharisees, then he would
have passed the man by. But he didn’t
want earthly fame. He helped the man
because he loved him. This man had
nothing to give back to Jesus for his service.
As Jesus told the host over dinner, if we serve the
poor and needy, we may very well not be repaid on this earth. We won’t get the fame and fortune a prideful
heart yearns for. Instead, we will be
repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.
This is our joy! We no longer
have to find our joy in earthly things that so easily fade away. This lack of fame and fortune is actually
proof that we are no longer living for this world but are now living in view of
our resurrection. Our justification
assures us that we are winning the race so we aren’t discouraged when we don’t
yet have any rewards.
Jesus told the host that his humble service would be
repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.
Is this the reason we have joy in living humbly? No, not at all. These eternal rewards do give us joy and confidence, but humility
is our spiritual act of thanksgiving towards God for sending his Son to die for
us and to save us from sin. We have far
more joy in this fact then we will ever need.
Do you see how this works? By God’s grace he freely justified us—and this is our joy. By his grace we can please him with genuine
Christian humility—and this is our joy.
By his grace, he gives us eternal rewards for being what he made
us. This, dear friends, is true joy.
Now we can happily do what Jesus commanded of the host. We will humbly serve others—even those who we know will never be able to pay us back. The rewards we will have in heaven will in every respect make up for any missed ‘rewards’ on earth. We will give generous gifts to God in our offerings—not in hopes of receiving even more from God like the man on the radio, but out of love for God. We will help those in need, not to receive the seats of honor like the Pharisees, but because it is the least we can do to show our thanks to God. These rewards that God promises to give us in heaven will make our joy overflow, but our confidence rests in our justification. This is the heart of humility.
Jesus has
freed us from the bonds of sin and no longer preaches his law to us like he did
to the Pharisees. Now he speaks to us
gospel promises as he did to the host.
He promises us great blessings of joy in heaven! We no longer force acts of humility in hope
of somehow receiving a reward on this earth.
Now we gladly serve our friends and neighbors and families with a humble
spirit inspired by the humble life of our Savior Jesus Christ. He is our ultimate example of humility. More importantly, he is our motivation and
power to be humble. And this dear
friends, is our confidence. This is our
Joy.
Amen.