An Invitation to God’s Great Banquet

Why do people trust in religion? Because they believe it's going to get them into the Kingdom of God. They make all of those sacrifices so that someday they won't have to make any sacrifices. They'll be in the glory of heaven. That was how the Pharisees lived.

That was how the Jews lived. But this was all a delusion because they were not headed for heaven at all. Jesus is going to shatter their false hope with a story. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm Phil Johnson, your host. The parables of Jesus, far from being happy, heartwarming stories, these were often meant to correct false belief and to expose self-righteousness. And as they did 2,000 years ago, the stories Jesus told help you see what it is that you're trusting in and to know whether the things you're trusting in are the right things. So how can you be sure you're not deceived, that you're not trusting in the wrong spiritual foundation, that you're not mistaken about your relationship with God?

Those are critical questions that John MacArthur will help you answer today. Stay here as he continues his compelling study of the parables titled, Stories with Purpose. Follow along in Luke chapter 14 as John begins today's lesson. It's fascinating to study the life of Christ so intimately and so closely.

And while we see a myriad of details, there are some sort of broad and sweeping realities that come into our view. One is that though Jesus wept, there is no statement in the Scripture that He ever laughed. Though He told all kinds of stories that were somber and sobering, there is no indication that He ever told a joke. And yet the text before us today surely seemed to the listeners as if He was telling a joke. Open your Bible to Luke 14 and I want to read verses 15 through 24.

We'll look at this text. Luke 14 verses 15 through 24. When one of those who were reclining at the table with Him heard this, He said to him, Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the Kingdom of God. But He said to him, A man was giving a big dinner and he invited many. And at the dinner hour He sent His slaves to say to those who had been invited, Come for everything is ready now.

But they all alike began to make excuses. The first one said to Him, I have bought a piece of land and I need to go out and look at it, please consider me excused. Another one said, I have bought five yoke of oxen and I'm going to try them out, please consider me excused.

Another one said, I have married a wife and for that reason I cannot come. And the slave came back and reported this to his master. Then the head of the household became angry and said to his slave, Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in here the poor and crippled and blind and lame. And the slave said, Master, what You have commanded has been done and still there's room.

And the master said to the slave, Go out into the highways and along the hedges and compel them to come in so that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste of my dinner. This story would be received by the Jews as laughable, ludicrous, ridiculous, impossible.

No such scenario could ever happen, inconceivable. This is a joke without a punch line. Invited guests to a great feast prepared by a wealthy man, as indicated by the fact that it was a big dinner and many were invited, would be the pinnacle of social life, the high point for important people to hold such banquets and to fill them with those invited guests was to receive not only a great meal prepared for you, not only great honor for being there, but to enjoy great music and the fun and the fellowship that went along with the celebration. This was the pinnacle of Jewish social life in a rather mundane and boring world of existing in an agricultural environment, or eking out an existence in the city, in the routine of trying to get enough for food which was a daily battle because you had to prepare your own or have someone do it for you, to have a great feast prepared for you and to be invited by a very prominent person could be the highlight of your life. This just wouldn't happen, that people who had accepted an invitation would then refuse to come and the rich man would fill his banquet table with the riffraff and the scum of society.

Absolutely absurd. Now before we look at the story and its meaning, just a reminder, verse 15 says, when one of those who were reclining at the table with him, it reminds us that we're at lunch and this is a lunch provided by a very prominent Pharisee for other Pharisees and scribes, mentioned in verse 3 of this chapter. The luncheon is first identified in verse 1. And they had invited Jesus because they wanted to trap Jesus into healing a man who had a case of edema related to some serious organ disease. They wanted to trap Jesus into healing the man, thus violating the Sabbath and thus proving that He was not from God. Well Jesus overturned their intentions and silenced them. He did the healing and He confronted them with the reality that if they had an ox that fell in a ditch, they'd pull it out on a Sabbath because it meant money. Certainly if they had a son that fell into a ditch, they'd pull him out because of love. They really were hypocrites.

They really were duplicitous. Then He went on to talk about humility, the kind of humility that is characteristic of those who entered the Kingdom. And after His lecture on humility, He concludes in verse 14 that those who are truly humble will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous. Now they knew He was talking about eternal life. They knew what the resurrection of the righteous was. Jesus was telling them that you are too proud to enter the Kingdom, you need to humble yourself and such would be manifest in the fact that instead of clamoring for chief seats at a banquet or instead of holding a banquet and inviting only the prominent people, you would reach out in humility and seek the last place, or you would reach out in humility and invite the poor and the blind and the maimed and the lame.

In other words, we remember that He was simply identifying the manifestation or the outward expression of a humble heart. He was telling them that they were too proud, they needed to humble themselves if they ever wanted to end up at the resurrection of the righteous. And so verse 14 concludes with that comment about the resurrection of the righteous.

Now the Jews knew this. They knew about the resurrection of the righteous, of course. And they believed that the righteous included them, particularly the Pharisees and the scribes. They were the elite of the righteous. And resurrection was their whole hope.

They held out hope for the resurrection because that was what they had to look for in the otherwise very difficult, very burdensome, very painful, very self-sacrificing and limiting existence of a legalist. They lived their lives according to very minute prescriptions. There were relentless burdens and limitations attached to living under Jewish legal tradition. It was painful. It was a kind of deprivation. They endured self-sacrifice. They endured endless rituals. The weight of their legalism went down to the very minute aspects of eating every day.

It was a huge burden, a burden that was so difficult to bear, Jesus called it a burden that was unbearable in the 23rd chapter of Matthew. Why would they do that? Why would they live under such strictures? Answer, because they believed they were achieving the resurrection of the righteous.

They were willing to suffer in this life to gain life eternal and to be free in life eternal from such limitations. In fact, they actually believed that the more rules they kept, the more they assured that they would be a part of the resurrection of the righteous. So they added and added and added and added more and more and more traditions to the laws of Scripture in order that they might in keeping them secure their place in the resurrection of the righteous. This is about the way every religion functions. Why do any people endure the strictures of their own religion?

Why do they do that? Consider the kinds of deprivation that they do in their situation, except for the fact that they believe that through this they achieve the resurrection of the righteous. Why do they endure all of that? Because they believe they're achieving the resurrection of the righteous. Why does anybody in any religion behave according to the religious standards? Because they believe they're achieving the resurrection of the righteous. That's how all religion works, except Christianity where we know we can't achieve that, it's a gift of grace through faith in Christ. But everywhere else, this is simply a willingness to make whatever sacrifices are required here to achieve the resurrection to come. The promise of a future good life is what causes people to live with such restriction and restraint and limitation and burdens of morality in their external conduct. And so the Jews were looking forward to the resurrection of the righteous, but they in viewing the resurrection of the righteous saw it as a lavish celebration in the presence of God and indeed that was right.

They actually saw it as a banquet. That was because the prophet Isaiah described it that way. In the twenty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, Isaiah looks forward to the future that God has for His people.

Listen to what he says, the Lord of hosts, verse 6, Isaiah 25, will prepare a lavish banquet for all peoples on this mountain, a banquet of aged wine, choice pieces with marrow and refined aged wine. And on this mountain He will swallow up the covering which is over all peoples, even the veil which is stretched over all nations. He will swallow up death for all time. The Lord God will wipe tears away from all faces, remove the reproach of His people from all the earth. For the Lord has spoken, it will be said in that day, behold, this is our God for whom we have waited that He might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited, let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation. We're going to be there, we're going to be saved, all the burdens will be eliminated, all the veils will be taken away, we'll all be there and we'll have this lavish banquet.

A lavish banquet was the highest experience socially, the most fulfilling and joyful celebration they knew anything about and that is why it became an analogy or a metaphor for the heavenly celebration. And that's carried on even into the New Testament where we see heaven in revelation as the marriage supper of the Lamb, we all, as it were, sit around the banquet table of God in the glory of the new heaven and the new earth. So when Jesus speaks of the resurrection of the righteous and it happens to be at a lunch, when they're sitting at a table eating, somebody begins to think about the fact that isn't it going to be wonderful when we all get to the great banquet of God, when we all get to the resurrection of the righteous? And so in verse 15, one of those reclining at the lunch table with Him when He heard Him refer to the resurrection of the righteous said to Him, blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the Kingdom of God.

Almost sounds like a toast, doesn't it? It is a beatitude but it's almost as if He picked up His cup of wine and said, blessed is everyone who will be eating bread in the Kingdom of God and they all said, yes. This is an affirmation of two things, an affirmation that they were going to be there and an affirmation that they didn't accept what Jesus had just said. Basically Jesus said, you're too proud to enter the Kingdom of God.

There needs to be a dramatic change. You need to humble yourself as manifest in such things as who it is you associate with and how you seek the last place and not the first place. But they had nothing but scorn for the comments of Jesus if indeed they bothered to process them at all. They were convinced due to their fastidious and dutiful observance of the Law and the traditions that they were going to be the righteous in the righteous resurrection and they were going to be sitting at the great banquet of God eating bread in the Kingdom. And so this is a pronouncing of blessing upon their own heads, a kind of toast to themselves, affirming that they had rejected the indictment of Jesus. Confident they were secure in the resurrection of the righteous by their Abrahamic ancestry and by their adherence to the tradition.

They would not only be there, but they would be in the prominent seats there. That was so much a part of Jewish thinking that even the disciples were caught up in it. That's why James and John sent their mother to ask Jesus if they could sit on the right and the left hand in the Kingdom. They had that same mentality, it was in the fabric of how they thought.

They were all raised up in a work system. You tried to achieve the highest place of prominence. They were sure they would be in the chief seats in the heavenly banquet. And while this is not directly an adversarial comment, this is not an attack on what Jesus says directly. Indirectly it is a scorn and a rebuke of the Lord's insinuation that they were too proud to be in God's Kingdom, that only the humble were going to show up at the righteous resurrection. On the contrary, we are the blessed who will eat bread in the Kingdom of God and all the rest would have said, yes, amen, we'll all be there. Now dear ones, this is a totally misguided assumption that needs immediate and unmistakable correction.

And so our Lord speaks, and I just tell you something right here because it's a good place to inject it. Jesus always sought to shatter false religious hope. He never put His arm around a Pharisee and said, well we worship the same God, we're both going to be there.

You're My brother. He never put His arm around a scribe who was living in a delusion and said to him, well you are a student of the Old Testament and you are worshiping the God of Israel and we're going to be there, you're My brother. He never put His arms around a synagogue crowd and said, what you're doing is really good, God's going to accept this religious effort in His name as enough.

He exploded every time the false religious security of the Jews at every level, at the level of the Pharisees, the scribes and at the level of the people in the synagogues. Jesus always sought to shatter false religious hope. This is critical in all evangelism. This is being honest. This is being honest. Anybody who lives under some kind of misguided assumption that they're headed for heaven needs to know that that is not true.

It needs to be immediately and unmistakably and clearly corrected. This is applicable to people in any false religion. You cannot put your arms around people in false religion and say, well because you're religious, because you have quote faith, you're okay. Especially in this climate in which today everybody is sort of entitled to their own faith and whatever it is is going to be okay.

I don't want to hear about your faith, I want to hear about your relationship to the faith, the faith once for all delivered to the saints. Because your faith...everybody's got faith in something, that doesn't mean anything unless your faith is placed in the Lord Jesus Christ, your faith is useless. But why do people trust in religion? Because they believe it's going to take them to the resurrection of the righteous, going to get them into the Kingdom of God. Why do they go through the strictures and the requirements and the duties and responsibilities and constraints and the moral requirements of their religion? Because they make all of those sacrifices so that some day they won't have to make any sacrifices. They'll be in the glory of heaven. That was how the Pharisees lived, that was how the Jews lived. But this was all a delusion because they were not headed for heaven at all.

And Jesus is going to shatter their false hope with a story, a parable. And in fact, as a brief outline, four points, invitation, excuses, inclusion, exclusion. Can you follow that? Invitation, excuses, inclusion, exclusion. Let's look at the invitation. Verse 16, He said to him, a man was giving a big dinner and he invited many. The operative words, big and many. This is a huge event. This is a very wealthy man. He has a dinner in mind that will be a grand gala banquet. And he invites a huge number of people. Now this is a mirror that the Jews can easily see themselves in because they understand this.

This is...this is the pinnacle of their social experience. For Jesus it's a story to attack the delusional self-confidence of the Jews in their false religion. The man is obviously prominent because he has the capability to give a big Dapenon, meaning dinner banquet on a grand scale, like the wedding feast in the parable of Matthew 22 which is very similar to this one. The wedding feast would be the banquet of all banquets, could last for days as this one perhaps could.

He invited many and that would be an extensive number of people and the invitation would come in a very personal, formal way as an invitation would come to you even today to a wedding or to some grand scale gala banquet. It would identify the event only when we get one of those, it tells us where it is, when it is and exactly the time you're supposed to be there, right? But in the ancient world it wasn't like that. The actual day and the actual time were left open.

It would be some time in the future, in a world without clocks, in a world without watches, life moves at a different pace. And in a world where you had to kill the animals and you had to clean the animals and you had to cook the animals and you had to get all of the vegetables and everything else you wanted and do all the preparation, specificity couldn't be stated at the first invitation so always there were two invitations. First invitation identified you as one who was being invited as an honored guest and you waited to get the second invitation which basically said, verse 17 says, at the dinner hour He sent His slave to say to those who had been invited, come for everything is ready now. Every one of these kind of events had two invitations, the one that let you know you would be future invited and then the second invitation came when everything was ready. Again this indicates the lavish nature of this. This wasn't lunch at somebody's house after a Sabbath service in the morning such as they were experiencing here.

This was a huge event. And the indication here is that everybody accepted. Nobody refuses, doesn't say anything like that and that is according to Jewish custom the way it would have been. I mean, the Pharisees loved to be at banquets. Matthew 23, 6, they sought the chief seats at banquets cause they were places of honor and prominence and public vision. Everybody would have said, yes, absolutely, oh this would be an honor, not only the lavish spread and the great entertainment and all the fall-drol that would go on, but the prominence that you would be given by being invited by such a person. But at the dinner hour when all the animals had been killed and skinned and prepared and everything had been gathered and everything was ready, and the slave goes to those who had been invited and said, come now, for everything is ready, a most bizarre thing happens. They are all preinvited guests cause that's what it says in verse 17, say to those who had been invited. Come for everything is ready. The long-awaited dinner is to begin. They would have been with bated breath, anticipating when do you think it will start, when do you think it will start, will it be this week, will it be tomorrow, will it be the next day, will it be tonight that we're going to hear that it's going to be tomorrow.

They would live in anticipation of this great event. But when the invitation comes at the hour, verse 18, we get excuses. So we go from the invitation to the excuses, listen to these. They all alike began to make excuses. Everybody said, I can't come...all of them. They all came up with excuses. Now this is where the Pharisees at lunch are saying, this is ridiculous, nobody would do that.

Huh? What a joke. This is churlish, to borrow an old English word. This is rude.

This is unrefined. This is considered outrageous and unacceptable conduct. This would not happen. This kind of breach of courtesy and the breach of kindness to a man and his staff who had prepared a massive feast to say, I'm sorry, I'm not going to come and have everybody say that. I mean, that would be...that is a horrible breach of social ethics. In fact, some ancient Near Eastern traditions equate that with a declaration of war because when you were invited to a meal with someone, that was an extension of friendship. And when you refused that, that was a statement that you wanted no friendship with that individual.

It was essentially a declaration of war. Nobody would do this, but they all alike did it. Pharisees and the scribes must have looked at each other and said, this is an absurd story. Where is this story going?

Nobody would do that, let alone everybody. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur. He's chancellor of the Master's University and Seminary, and his message today comes from his current study, Stories with Purpose.

Thanks for being with us. Now, John, going back to what you said today about self-righteousness and the parable of the great banquet, talk about why Jesus spent so much time criticizing self-righteousness. Why was that sin particularly offensive to him?

Well, obviously it is particularly offensive because it stands in the way of salvation. If you think that you can do anything or have done anything ceremonially, religiously, morally, comparatively, to contribute to your salvation, you cannot be saved. In other words, if you offer any work to contribute to your salvation, if anyone does, then salvation is impossible.

You have to come confessing bankruptcy, no works, nothing to offer. Everything in my hand I bring, says the old hymn, simply to your cross I cling. And you know, Jesus made that issue, that issue of self-righteousness that stands as a barrier to salvation, he made that issue the issue in so many of his parables. In fact, you could say that the parables are all about salvation, and because they're all about salvation, they have to confront self-righteousness and call for humble repentance. We have a book titled, Parables, the Mysteries of God's Kingdom Revealed Through the Stories Jesus Told. Many people think they understand the parables, they think they're morality tales, stories that are supposed to elicit emotion, they're all about salvation.

They're all about condemning self-righteousness, greed, materialism, and many other sins. And by the way, parables were also given by our Lord as judgments. So I've written a book on some of the great parables, the Good Samaritan, the Pearl of Great Price, the Pharisee, the tax collector, the rich man, Lazarus, and eight others. You need to get a copy of this, order your book today from Grace to You. Just ask for the book, Parables. It will change permanently how you understand not only the parables, but the issue of salvation, and that's the most critical issue of all.

Yes, it is. And friend, it is that focus on what Jesus taught about self-righteousness and repentance and the true nature of salvation that makes John's book an ideal gift to put into the hands of someone who you may have been giving the gospel of Jesus to, or a young Christian whom you've been discipling. To pick up your copy of John's book titled, Parables, get in touch today. The book, Parables, costs $13.75 and shipping is free.

To order, call us at 800-55-GRACE or visit our website, gty.org. That title again, Parables, you can order yours today by calling 800-55-GRACE or go to gty.org. Now turning the corner a bit, we receive letters from listeners who have benefited from John's Bible teaching, and these letters are a huge encouragement to us. We want to hear how God is using grace to you in your life. So if this broadcast is strengthening you spiritually or if you've seen your family's understanding of Scripture grow, we'd love to hear from you. Email your story to letters at gty.org, again that's letters at gty.org, or you can reach us by regular mail by writing to Grace to You, Box 4000, Panorama City, California 91412. That address again, Box 4000, Panorama City, California 91412. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson, encouraging you to be back tomorrow with a look at a parable of Jesus that can help you know if your hope is grounded in the right source. That's next in John's series, Stories with Purpose. It's another half hour of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on Grace to You.