About this sermon
At a Pharisee’s dinner Jesus taught the guests to take the lowest place and taught the host to invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind, who cannot repay. In the parable of the great banquet those first invited made excuses, and the master filled his house with the poor and outcasts. Biblical hospitality is received with humility and given as an act of grace, mirroring God’s invitation to sinners to the wedding feast of the Lamb.
Sermon transcript
You may be seated, please. It’s a good choice. That’s one of my favorites too. I’m going to invite you in just a moment to turn to Luke chapter 14. We are going to be reading from Luke chapter 14 starting in verse 7 all the way through verse 24. Our subject tonight is a topic that perhaps is not as in vogue to talk about today and is actually something that I think has probably fallen out of practice in many of our Christian homes, and yet is something that is essential to our faith, something that’s essential to our Christian life, something I might even say is essential to the survival of the church in America today, and that is the topic of hospitality. We’re going to look here at a large section. I’m not going to get to the depths of everything that is here that would take about three or four sermons. However, I would like to highlight some things that Jesus is going to tell us.
Our Lord is going to instruct us about the practice of hospitality, but first let’s go to Lord in prayer. Would you pray with me? Heavenly father, Lord, we come before you this morning or this evening. And we, we confess that this is your word, that your Holy spirit inspired it to be written down, superintended the words and Lord this morning, we are unable to understand. and unable to apply it without the work of the Holy Spirit as well. So we pray that the Spirit would be giving us illumination of this text, giving us strength in order to apply it and be present in the midst of its reading and proclamation this evening. And this we pray in the name of the one who sent the Spirit, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
Luke chapter 14, just to summarize verses one through six, we see that Jesus is in the house of a Pharisee on the Lord’s day, enjoying hospitality. And the question has come up about what it is that you do on the Lord’s day. How do you spend your Lord’s day? What is your time devoted to? And Jesus has taught again, that it is for works of mercy. It is for works of healing. And that is what he has done in the first section here, but he goes on to say this, starting in verse seven. Hear now the word of the Lord.
Now he told the parable to those who were invited when he noticed how they chose the places of honor, saying to them, when you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him.
And he who invited you both will come and say to you, give your place to this person. And then you will begin with shame to take the lower place. But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place so that when your host comes, he may say to you, friend, move up higher. Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled. And he who humbles himself will be exalted.
He said also to the man who had invited him, when you give a dinner or a banquet, do you invite your friends or your brothers or do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you must be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed because they cannot repay you. for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.
When one of those who reclined at table with him heard these things, he said to him, blessed is everyone who will eat the bread in the kingdom of God. But he said to him, a man once gave a great banquet and invited many. And at the time for the banquet, he sent his servant to say to those who have been invited, come for everything is now ready.
But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused. Another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused. And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.
So the servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house became angry. and said to his servant, go quickly, go out quickly to the streets and the lanes of the city and bring in the poor and the crippled and the blind and the lame. And the servant said, sir, what you have commanded has been done and still there is room. And the master said to the servant, go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.”
Grass withers and flower fades. This, the word of our Lord, endures forever. Jesus, here in this passage on the Lord’s Day, is enjoying hospitality in the house of a Pharisee, perhaps showing that we don’t merely accept the invitations to hospitality from those that are the ones that we want to spend the most time with and that we like and are most like us.
Jesus is there in the home, probably between services, between morning worship and evening worship. This is in fact, if you ever read about daily life in Puritan New England, I recently was reading that, and they actually had this as a practice that after morning worship, often beginning around 9am and then ending around lunchtime, they would have houses that would open, the local public house would open and and people would take their picnic lunches in there and they would eat especially if they come out of town or they would go into people’s homes and those in the community would host the ones that are the farmers out in the fields and from lunch onward until evening worship would be a time of open hospitality in everyone’s home. There was of course nothing that was open, no work to attend to, no children’s games to attend, no events No concerts to go to. They gave themselves entirely in that time to discussion of what they had heard in the morning worship. and to other conversation, what they’ve been praying for them about, or other things, other readings of scriptures. And Jesus finds himself in probably a very similar situation in ancient Judea. After the morning worship, he would be in someone’s home that had invited him for hospitality, invite him in.
And this is how Jesus would spend a part of his Lord’s day receiving But he has some comments on those that are giving hospitality, on how it is that one ought to give hospitality. So in looking at biblical hospitality here, we have three things here to learn and then to apply. And the first thing that we learn in verses 7 to 11 is how we should receive hospitality. And the dominant word here in receiving hospitality is it’s to be received in humility. It is to be received in humility. And this was not how hospitality was received in this day.
Everybody was very concerned about being honored, being recognized when they walked into the door and when the seats were given out. In fact, this probably was one of the main reasons Jesus was asked in was that he was considered somebody that was notable. And you would see everybody else was jockeying for a position when they were invited in. There was a sense of entitlement. In the midst of hospitality, you were entitled to this. You were entitled to all of this focus. The invitation to hospitality was all about me.
And Jesus instructs instead to receive hospitality with humility. The whole discussion about not taking the highest place is to display that if you accept hospitality with pride, You may find yourself humiliated. If you exalt yourself, you will be humiliated in the midst of that.
You will perhaps, you almost have the image of going into a wedding feast and somebody starts to sit at the family table and they’re going, they’re had to be told, no, this is for the family and distinguished guests. You have to go down there. Don’t assume that the place of honor is always for you. Why? Well, hospitality is always to be seen as an act of grace. It’s an act of grace, and so when you receive it, you’re not entitled to it, or else it’s not a grace.
In fact, we may actually have some struggles with this with ourself. I don’t know your attitude when you go to a cookout, a party, some other sort of gathering. I’ve known some, in fact, struggled with myself with this passage in terms of stewing over people not fussing about me, right? They’re not coming up to me and talking to me. They’re not being hospitable enough. I’ve received the invitation, but they’re not talking to me enough. Is this an attitude that you have, or do you seek out others? Do you actively engage? in that social situation? Or is it just to see who the important people are and just talk to them and leave out everybody else? And that can be hard. I know with myself, I have some introverted tendencies. I don’t know about you, but often in that situation, my pride may not have me seek out the important people, but to go off in the corner by myself and hope that nobody talks to me.
I used to actually be known for taking books to gatherings. I’d be invited to a cookout when I was in college and I would take a book with me because I preferred to spend that time with myself. That was my pride. Now today, everybody has their phone and they’re tempted to do that too, right? Just to spend time with me. And the whole event is just about whether or not I’m being entertained. It’s not received as an act of grace and received in humility. And Jesus was noticing that in his day. And it is a problem also in our day.
How do you receive hospitality? And that’s going to be important for the image of hospitality that we see later and what that says about how we understand grace. So the first point that’s to be made here is that hospitality is to be received in humility and gratitude. And this is also because of the second point that he’s going to make, not merely in receiving hospitality, but what is biblical hospitality when it is given?
And he states here, starting in verse 12, that it’s to be given, not merely to who you know, your family, your friends, but it’s to be given to the needy. Biblical hospitality is a hospitality that should be given to the needy. And then you see there, he gives that in a didactical form, very quick, very simple to understand.
And then somebody blurts out in verse 15, right? Blessed be the one who eats and drinks, who eats bread in the kingdom of heaven. It’s interesting trying to interpret what was this guy saying here? Was he agreeing with Jesus? Was he being sarcastic about the people that were enjoying that feast that it’s not people he’d want to be around? Was he trying to change the subject because Jesus had started talking about this and it had become very awkward? All sorts of thoughts are put there. But what you see is Jesus doesn’t stop in this teaching. He doesn’t change the subject. He actually illustrates it with a parable. What he says didactically in 12 to 14, he now will illustrate with a parable.
The parable is this twofold invitation and that day you would invite people and say there’s going to be this feast coming up Set aside some time and then once the feast was ready after everything had been prepared you’d send out the second invitation It’s ready now. You’re able to come and so these people had probably pre-invitation pre-approved, pre-said that they were going to come, RSVP’d, but then when the second invitation comes, it’s ready, everybody has an excuse, right? And it all has the same form, if you notice it. There’s three excuses, but they all have the same form.
It is this. I have done this, so now I am obligated to this, and therefore I cannot come. Whether that’s inspecting a field, or the oxen, or I have been married. I have done this. I’ve gotten married. Therefore, I have these other obligations. I cannot come. And what is this really saying? I have something better to do. To this banquet that has come, and they said, yes, I will set aside this time for this. But when the time comes, everybody responds with these excuses.
And so then the host of the banquet sends out a new set of invitations to the needy. Those who will not respond, I have something better to do, but who would jump at the chance to go to a banquet. Those that are not typically invited, the lame, often based on Leviticus, people would not merely not have them in a certain temple court, but not have them in their homes. But he is inviting the lame to this banquet, the poor, the homeless.
I think of Mephiboseth, I can never pronounce that name right. But David goes and tries to find someone to show kindness to in the house of Saul. You remember this? And who does he find? He finds somebody that was lame to come and invite to his table that could not repay him in order for him to show hospitality to him. And it really reminds me of that scene in 2 Samuel. And this rich man in this parable though, when he has this banquet, what is he going to do? Well, at these sorts of banquets, the rich man would then come and sit at the banquet with everybody on the level playing field of the table of the banquet, which I think is notable here because this was not a soup kitchen. This was a banquet.
I don’t know if any of you have ever had the opportunity to serve in a soup kitchen. Before, I used to work with youth quite a bit, and I would take them to a soup kitchen. I thought it would be a great experience for them. But if you ever notice the pattern at a soup kitchen, it can often be, here, I’m taking this food.
I’m putting it onto a plate. Here’s your food and drink. Now you go sit over there while I’m serving you, acting in a place of superiority. That wasn’t until one time we went and served, and then after we were done handing out the food, they said, now go take a plate and go sit. with the people that you just served.
I thought, this is what we should have been doing the entire time, right? We should have been sitting and listening and on a level playing field, even though we had served them and been providing hospitality, we were to eat with them. I’m convicted by this passage that our practice of hospitality, though an act of grace, should be done at a level table.
And the ultimate example of that, of course, is Jesus. Jesus didn’t come in any place in the Bible that he opened a soup kitchen where he served and didn’t sit with the people. He enjoyed hospitality with people. In fact, he enjoyed hospitality with the lowest of the low. I don’t think that the Pharisees realize that he is stepping down from his social status to eat with the lowest of the low. the religious people here, or the self-thought of religious people here. Because what is Jesus’s social class? He should be at table with God the Father and God the Spirit, right?
But he has stepped down in order to enjoy hospitality, accept hospitality here. There is no table high enough to honor Christ at this table. He is stepping down. He is actually doing what he is teaching them in this teaching in 7 to 11 and also here.
But these were people who had used religion, not in the way that James says, true religion, honoring and helping the widow and the orphan, but they thought of it as a badge of honor, some sort of a place of status to show that off. But Christ has lowered himself, in a sense, to accept hospitality here. And when we sit with the stranger, with the one who is in hospitality with us, we are to sit with them and not necessarily approve of them, not necessarily say, I agree with everything that you believe and have to say, because Jesus obviously did not with this Pharisee, but he cared about their souls. He cared about discussing the things of God with them or else he would have kept his mouth shut and never told this parable here.
You see, hospitality is to be received in humility. It’s to be given to the needy because of what it symbolizes here. This is the third thing we learn here is that true hospitality, I’ve said it before, but true hospitality is an act of grace. And of course, when we read this parable. We all realize who the host is, who the one sending out the invitation is.
It is God himself. The image of the table and of the feast are all throughout scripture. And of course is the ultimate end of what scripture is heading towards, right? Isaiah 25. Isaiah 65, Revelation 19, the wedding feast at the end. What is that? That is the ultimate host and invitation of God’s people to the banquet of heaven. And so it should be obvious in this parable, the man putting on the banquet here is a picture of who God himself is in inviting humanity. But what happens? The invitation goes out and those that feel themselves well off, The culture, the busy, they do not respond. They have excuses. They have better things to do. Who does respond?
The crippled, the blind, the poor, the needy, the ones that know their need. What is hospitality here? It is the humble receiving hospitality. It is the host giving to the needy because hospitality is an act of grace. And brothers and sisters, we are to give hospitality. This is not merely a picture of what God does for us, but we are also commanded to give hospitality. Romans 12, 13, contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. First Peter 4, 9, show hospitality to one another without grumbling.
Hebrews 13.2, do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers for some have thereby entertained angels unaware.
Matthew 25.35, what does Jesus say?
For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. What do you think of when you think of hospitality? You think of the time that you have your friends over, or do you think of the time that you have your family over? You see what Jesus is teaching here is that what we might call biblical hospitality is first and foremost not entertaining or performing for friends or family.
It is instead loving the stranger. That’s the root of the word there, actually, is philia xenia. That is kind of the opposite of xenophobia, if you ever heard that term, right? Fear of the stranger or the foreigner. This is what you’re commanded to love the stranger, the one who is not from among your ranks, your family, and your group of friends. Who is the stranger? Of course, you’re the one that’s not known. And they’re often the unbeliever. Today’s society. Who is the stranger? It seems to be everybody, isn’t it?
Many of us do not know even our neighbors. We live in an age in which you may have hundreds of Facebook friends, and yet if you ever ask anybody about their deep friendships, they maybe can count them on one hand, if at all. Our relationships today are razor thin in terms of their depth.
There is a book that Someone wrote that was called The Art of Neighboring, and he had this activity that might be interesting for you to do. And that is to draw a little house to represent your house, wherever it is that you live, and then draw a tic-tac-toe around it. And then start filling out information about your neighbors. First off, their name. That would be A. B would be, what do they do for a living? C would be any other intimate details that you know, their family life. Are they some sort of a sports fan? What is it that they like to do with hobbies? And then D, something that is even more of an intimate detail, something they struggle with, something that they’ve gone through that’s a hard time lately.
And many of us would struggle just to fill out category A in knowing the names of the neighbors that are around us. Oftentimes, when we’re told to love our neighbor, today, that’s also loving the stranger. Your neighbor is often a stranger. to us. Hospitality is meant to be a way, a means of knowing the unknown and thereby carrying the gospel to the unchurched by inviting them to our dinner table.
I’ve had many discussions here, I think it was even one here, it has been in our church, about many remember fondly the Evangelism Explosion program. Anybody remember that? It was a program of going door-to-door with the gospel and had some really great diagnostic questions. I still use that main diagnostic question when people are being interviewed for membership at our church. The question about if you were to die tonight, and God would ask you, why should I let you into my kingdom? Well, how would you respond?
However, some have lamented the fact that it doesn’t seem to have as much effectiveness today. First off, you have to convince them that you’re not a Jehovah’s Witness or Mormon on their doorstep. And secondly, many people don’t want to have those conversations on their front porch or hear that sort of sales pitch.
But here we see hospitality. is more dominant throughout the course of Scripture and even in the Gospels than some sort of door-to-door evangelism is. And in fact, door-to-door evangelism was never the dominant model for evangelism in the Bible. It seems with Jesus, the dominant model is, I’m coming to your house today. The dominant model was of hospitality, and often this would reach the people, Zacchaeus, or these Pharisees that were considered unreachable, perhaps, in our mind. Perhaps some of you have heard the story of somebody who was reached by hospitality by the name of Rosaria Butterfield.
She was an atheist professor of gay and lesbian studies at Syracuse University in New York. who after she wrote an article attacking Christians, I think during the time of the promise keepers in the local paper. She received lots of letters back, and she would put them into different categories. And one box was for hate mail, the other was for fan mail. And she got one letter that she couldn’t decide where to put it.
It was a letter from a local Christian, a local, actually, pastor, that didn’t attack her, but asked if she wanted to talk about her article with an actual, real-life Christian, and invited her to his house for dinner. that letter sat on her table at her desk, not knowing what to do with it until she decided she would respond, because at least she would have more research that she would be able to use in more writing.
She was invited into this Christian home. A husband and a wife welcomed her, asked her in. He prayed before the meal. He was explicitly Christian, but never gave a formulaic invitation to the gospel the whole time, just talked to her about what they believed, and talked to her also about what she enjoyed, and treated her actually as a human being. You see, at the end of the meal, she noticed that the person didn’t even share the sinner’s prayer with her and didn’t have even an invitation to church that time, because he asked her instead to come back next week and actually meant it. And this started in a way of life, of hospitality for this person, that they were invited into a Christian home to talk to a real Christian person, not on the internet, not on cable, but a real actual Christian. to share their faith with them.
She wasn’t attacked as a category, she was treated as a person. Over the course of two years of meals happened before she first set foot in a church. And when she set foot in the church, she was asked to others’ homes. And she saw the gospel at play in these people’s lives personally and up close. And this was in New York State. This wasn’t Southern hospitality. This wasn’t even blue-collar Yinzer hospitality. This was biblical hospitality in this little Reformed Presbyterian church in Syracuse, New York.
Today, she’s a professing Christian. married to a man who became a Reformed Presbyterian minister himself. And she’s written a bit about this. She just has a new book that came out about the gospel presented to her through hospitality, where she was introduced to real living Christianity and where she was treated as a human made in the image of God. She learned about Christ’s love personally through hospitality. She wrote in her book, the gospel comes with a house key. that this was radical ordinary Christian hospitality.
And she explains it this way, radically ordinary hospitality is this, using your Christian home in a way that seeks to make strangers neighbors and neighbors the family of God. It brings glory to God, serves others and lives out the gospel in word and deed. The purpose of radically ordinary hospitality is to build focus, deepen and strengthen the family of God, pointing others to the Bible-believing local church, and being earthly and spiritual good to everyone we know.
The ultimate example of this, of course, is Christ. This is how he evangelized. This is how he discussed the gospel, often over a table. Tim Chester noted that Jesus didn’t run projects, establish ministries, create programs, or put on events. He ate meals. and notes that if we are regularly eating meals and talking about Christ and the passion for him, this will happen as well. Others will hear the gospel message and those will resonate powerfully with what we are saying when we show them that we also believe this in our daily lives, not just at church, not just at a doorstep.
This, of course, when you think back over it throughout the course of scripture, is a dominant image throughout scripture, isn’t it? Think of Abraham with the three visitors, right? What is shared in that story? What’s shared in that story is a coming judgment to save his nephew from and rescue that is offered. What about the Passover meal in Exodus? The coming judgment and a way of escape. Rahab invited the spies in and heard about coming judgment and a way of escape.
Hospitality throughout scripture is at the heart of and as a picture of the gospel, the message of judgment and a way of escape. And hospitality is the call of all Christians as a primary means of introducing them to real Christianity, to introducing the stranger to real Christianity. And I know there are, there are objections to practicing hospitality, doing it more and doing it in the biblical way that Jesus has called us to do it.
And one of those, of course, is that it’s kind of scary, right? To actually talk to our neighbors, not through social media, but over the fence, to invite them into our homes. But is it scary if we’re inviting them into our homes for a meal or even just to eat while watching their sporting game that we found out that they like, whether it’s hockey, can’t do that right now, but baseball or something like that throughout the week, for a birthday party? For a neighborhood cookout, my wife and I decided once that we would do a neighborhood cookout when we lived in Illinois to meet our neighbors and to try to practice hospitality.
And what we discovered is when we invited a few people that lived a few houses down into our yard, people who had lived in the same houses for 20 years met each other for the first time in our backyard. There’s so many relationships that we just leave out there that we’ve never encountered them. We’ve never introduced ourselves to them because we’ve never had opportunity. What about inviting them over to enjoy hospitality, if not on our dinner table in our backyard? It’s not scary just to invite somebody over for the first time once we get into the habit of it.
And others may say, though, I don’t have the money for that. It’s too expensive. You know, there are cheap alternatives to having a fancy dinner party for hospitality. That’s not what is being talked about here. Hot dogs are really cheap. Frozen pizzas are very cheap. You can get those Jack’s pizzas or whatever they are. They’re like $2 each, right? It can be very cheap to do hospitality.
But even if it’s a sacrifice for us, what is it a sacrifice for? It’s a sacrifice for the biblical spreading of the gospel and inviting them in to our local church to experience the message of Christ. Many times it’ll take many meals like Rosario Butterfield had to have before they’ll accept an invitation to our church to hear about the gospel.
Some may say, yes, my wife really needs to hear about this and do this. But it’s interesting if you look through the qualifications of elders, and we all believe in male eldership, right? One of the qualifications for these male elders is hospitable, hospitality. It’s talked about first and foremost with males first. So it’s not just about whether or not the wives are hospitable. Men need to hear this message too.
And others still may say, well, I just don’t have the time. But when was Jesus doing this? The Lord’s day. You have time, you have a day that’s to be set aside for it. And if we don’t have the time in that day set aside for it, well, perhaps we need to do one step backwards and think about our use of the Lord’s day. We can do this. We ought to do this. We are commanded to do this.
Jesus used the Lord’s day and we’re familiar with the three categories, right? As Presbyterians for worship, for necessity, for mercy. And yet, you almost want to add a fourth category in there, hospitality. Really, you can put that into private terms of worship, but you see Jesus doing this. It’s a necessary work. It gives mercy to others, and it introduces people to the worship of God. It transcends all those categories.
And that’s what the Lord’s Day was used for, by Jesus. And we are commanded to be hospitable, and what better day to do that than on the Lord’s Day? And if you do that, I promise you, especially if you do that on the Lord’s day, Isaiah 58 promises, right? If you call the Sabbath a delight, and that’s part of delighting in the Sabbath. If you call the Sabbath a delight, he will cause us to ride on the heavens, right? He will bless our work in doing that.
This idea of biblical holy hospitality is not a burden, another burden for us to do. In fact, it’s a picture of the gospel. It’s what God has already done with us. In Christ, Christ did not count equality with God as something to be grasped onto and maintained, but instead he took on the form of a servant.
And part of that was in means of hospitality with us. In the parable, God is calling us to the banquet. The invitation has gone out to us, the poor, crippled, the blind, the needy. He has compelled us to come in by the work of his Holy Spirit. Has he not? He has been the ultimate host, giving us gracious hospitality, not that we deserved and received in pride, but that we were humbled in order to receive. It was an act of pure grace. And if we’ve received that from God, how can we not be changed by it?
To turn around and give that hospitality to those that are around us. to give it to strangers, even that that might become known neighbors and they might be invited into the family of God. We who have received hospitality ought to be known in our communities as those whose houses are open, whose tables are welcome for the needy spiritually and physically, because we were needy too. Would you pray with me? Heavenly father, Lord, we thank you that you sent out your servant, Christ, with the invitations that you compelled us by your servant and the Holy Spirit to come to the banquet, that we might enjoy the fellowship of the triune God, that we might enjoy being at the wedding feast.
In the end, we will experience that as we experience an act of grace. Lord, give us the power that we need in order to respond to this command. Lord, command what you wish, what you will. and will what you command. And Lord, we pray that you give us grateful hearts in order to respond to this. And this we pray in the name of the one who came seeking us with the invitation to the banquet, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen. Our final hymn this evening will be, if I can find it in the directory, number This is a wonderful hem if you pay the price.
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