Parables of Jesus: The Great Banquet

Auto-generated from the audio — may contain errors.

0:00 We're backing down from that. But we're continuing on this book with Ken House reading it again, looking at the parable of the great banquet. And I know we don't have time to read things. And when we do have time to read things, we might not want to read academic books. But this guy's really smart. So and the stuff that he says is really, if you want to understand parables at all, or even if you're like, oh, it'd be fun to find a way

0:30 to learn more about the Bible. This book is really good at it. And Brian founded online somewhere, so it still exists. It's not only in seminary basement, but this book exists. And so this week, you're learning about the parable from Luke. All these parables we've been going through are the parables of Luke, the parable of the great banquet, which is in Luke chapter 14. And you can look there with me. Last week, if you were with us, we just

1:02 like thought through kind of what I call the punchlines of several different parables, the gospel punchline. And it's fun to get some clarity on these parables as we move through them. And the author of this book, Ken Bailey, like asserts that this parable of the great banquet is one of the best he feels like in all of the scriptures. And it's in Luke chapter 14.

1:34 And well, let's look at it. Let's start back at verse 12 in Luke chapter 14. And then there's a couple of places we can go coming out of it. But first, Luke chapter 14, verse 12, he said also to the man who had invited him, Jesus was at a dude's house. When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor,

2:06 the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just. It's like an interesting moral challenge to the guy holding the banquet. The baseline is if you hold the banquet, you're usually doing pretty well. And you would invite people who you want to show that off to. Also, there's like a lot of stigma around any infirmity that is your fault that you have the disability or the infirmity. So you wouldn't want to associate with those people who are obviously sinners.

2:37 That's why they have such a hard time in life that God is punishing them. That's the thought. But we get to verse 15 where the parable comes up. When those who reclined at the table with him heard these things, they said to him, blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God. First off, they're reclining at a table. So if you had a table, a lot of times you would eat, you wouldn't have a table unless you were of a certain class. Like most regular folk, if they had friends over to eat,

3:11 they were all just kind of sitting around holding food or they had spread out a big platter of food on the ground on a rug and they all sit around it and eat. If you're reclining, you're reclining at a table, which means you're at a certain strata. And then so they're out of pretty nice dudes house. And then Jesus says this thing about inviting these people. But the main thing they hear is that you'll be rewarded in heaven. And when one of those who reclined at the table with him heard these things, he said to him,

3:42 hey, blessed is everyone who will eat in the kingdom of God. And there was a notion, a general notion, that the reign of God culminates in a banquet. And I just want to point us back to where that comes from. It's in Isaiah chapter 49. You've seen me moving around my bookmarks here. Isaiah chapter 49, because I mean, it's like this beautiful Isaiah chapter 25, different one. But we'll go to 49 later.

4:12 Isaiah chapter 25, let's see. And I'm just going to read through it, so hear it. And know that Isaiah is probably the most significant prophet. It's not the largest prophet in the book of the scriptures. But especially in first century Israel, Isaiah is something that is read and known a lot. So this idea, like a couple weeks ago, we talked about the motif that Isaiah has about Israel being a vineyard. Remember that that is a notion that immediately conjures

4:46 an idea of Israel. If you talk about a vineyard and God in first century Israel, they're thinking about the people of God. And also, when you talk about the kingdom of God or the great day of God, this idea of the banqueting feast comes to mind because of this prophecy from Isaiah. And we'll kind of skim through the beginning of it here. But I'd love for you to just hear it all. Oh Lord, you are my God and I will exalt you, Isaiah says. I will praise your name for you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful, and sure,

5:16 for you have made the city a heap, the fortified city of ruin, the foreigners placed in the city no more, it will never be rebuilt. Therefore, strong peoples will glorify you. Cities of ruthless nations will fear you, for you have been a stronghold to the poor, a stronghold to the needy in his distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat, for the breath of the ruthless is like a storm against a wall like heat in a dry place. You subdue the noise of the foreigners as heat by shade

5:47 of cloud, sow the song of the ruthless is put down, verse 6. On this mountain, the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food. So you get the feeling that he's vanquished all of the enemies of the people, right? And then he's set up a stronghold that all the oppressors of the poor and the needy and the homeless, all of the oppressors of those people, he's set up a safe place around him where all their enemies blow like wind on a wall,

6:19 on a strong wall. So in the place where he has vanquished all their enemies, set up a strong wall so they are secure. In the midst of this, he lays a feast, right? Where he has secured their protection. And on this mountain, the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine, well-refined. And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples,

6:50 the veil that is spread over all nations, you know, the veil, everyone that, that people will have the opportunity to see things as they truly are. He will swallow up death forever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces and the reproach of his people he will take away from the earth for the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, behold, this is our God. We have waited for him that he might save us.

7:22 This is the Lord. We have waited for him. Let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation. You can see why that prophecy from Isaiah takes root because it is beautiful. We don't realize always how much so many things are hounding us all the time. I remember a friend of mine once told me

7:57 that they could remember days from when I was younger, when I was silly, really calm. They were telling me I wasn't so silly anymore. And I can, I told him, yeah, I used to be silly. When I had no responsibility, I could still find the silliness, but it's true that no matter how much space you take up in life, meaning no matter how far or narrow your scope of responsibility, staying alive in the world

8:31 creates narratives and problems and issues to resolve always. Will we have the money? What will these people think? How will I spend this week? How will I take care of this person and that person? Even when things are going well, what vacation will we take and how will that work itself out? We don't realize how much the constant, even in good days, runs in the back.

9:03 So much that can you imagine the great rest when all the pressing issues have been resolved? When no questions need be answered. When all futures are secure, all threats are subdued, all wounds are set to right.

9:34 In this context, God says, after accomplishing that, now I lay for you a feast. Come and enjoy. Peace are great because not only is there good food and aged wine, but there's other people. Just like the best parties. So when... Just don't lose pages here or where.

10:05 When Jesus at a banquet reclining at a table, mentions the great banquet, peace of God, somebody at the table, chimes up and says, ah, blessed is everyone who will be at the kingdom of God. This might be a regular refrain to which they are expecting Jesus to say something like, yes Lord, let us be there with you. Like this is not like a question

10:37 out of dinner table. This is not an invitation for a discursus from Jesus. This is just like a positive affirmation. Jesus just referenced there will be a banqueting feast of God, which we're all looking forward to. And the guy at dinner says, yeah, blessed is everyone who ends up there and Jesus is supposed to say, yeah, let's all pray that God gets us there. And he doesn't, right? Jesus at the banqueting feast, I don't know if they're getting to keep eating while he tells the story or if they're waiting for him

11:09 to finish telling the story, but Jesus takes the excuse, the opportunity to launch into the story, right? Okay, blessed is everyone who will eat bread. That's a colloquial way to say like, have dinner. In the kingdom of God, but he said to him, and then Jesus looked at the guy, I mean, this is not what he was looking for when he said this. He thought he was being pious. And Jesus looks at him, I mean, you can imagine,

11:40 I feel bad for him a little bit. Usually I don't feel bad for these guys, but this guy I kind of feel bad for. And Jesus said to him, a man once gave a banquet, a great banquet, and invited many. And at the time for the banquet, he sent his servants to speak to those who had been invited, come, everything is now ready. Remember we talked about like the reason I would read this book in order for us to understand the parables is because there are some things when they're telling the story

12:13 that they know, it's that you and I don't know. And so we could get a surface level meeting, but we could get a deeper meeting when we know how they would hear it. So this is not like a deep secret knowledge. This is just an everyday knowledge. It's so everyday that Jesus doesn't say it explicitly. So when a guy would like this in the first century be planning the feast, he would be inviting important people like Jesus mentions earlier, people about his period, people who were with him. And he's having a great banquet.

12:43 There are also people who could have great banquets and they go around and have banquets with each other. But he invites them first and then they confirm that they can come or they cannot come. Once that first confirmation comes, he decides how many people he's got so he knows what he's got to kill. He's got to kill a bird or two birds, right? Lamb or a calf, right? The more people that are coming, the bigger animals got to kill. So once you say, yes, I'll be there, you're bound in to coming

13:13 because he's killing things for you, right? Like it's not like he's gonna return some chicken to public. He's butchered an animal. He's prepared it like you're bound. He's out money because of you. You're coming. Not to mention culturally, it's really bad. So when he says, a man once gave a great banquet and invited many, that's the first invitation. They said yes or no. Now he knows how many people and what animal to kill.

13:44 And then this common, then once the food's ready, the animals have been killed and it prepared, now come anytime. So he sends a servant out, say, hey, everything's ready. You can come whenever you're ready, just come, food's ready, you come whenever you're ready. Now's the time. So they do two invitations, but that's normal after the first one you're committed. So by the time he said, and it's time for the banquet, he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, come for everything is now ready, that's not like, hey, do you wanna come?

14:15 That's like, I killed the animal for us to enjoy together. I can't make it alive again, come and eat it with me. Because you said you were coming. At that time for the banquet, he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, come for everything is now ready, but they all alike began to make excuses. It's hard to translate, but it's like in the present tense and all at one time, it's like they all at one time made excuses. And the guy says,

14:45 these are conspicuously stupid excuses. And they happen all at one time. It's like they wanted, it's like none of them, they want to embarrass the guy. Like it's very bad what they did. Okay, so, but they all like made excuses. The first I bought a field, I must go and see it, please have me excused. He goes through a significant effort to offer that I was reading to make the case

15:17 that these are stupid excuses, not to be taken seriously. And I can go through them with you, but they all have cults like, it takes more than a year to buy a piece of land. And in the obligations to buy the land, you have to outline every specific thing that's in there. It's like, just to be the equivalent of someone telling you, hey, I just bought a house over the phone, sight unseen. I don't know anything about it. I'm going to go look at it. And I've got to do it right now at the time when I told you I was coming to the dinner. Like it's absurd.

15:48 Clearly he's slapping the guy in the face. And then same with the oxen. He's like, if you buy oxen, you don't just buy him. You go and walk him and get tested first. If these are absurd excuses where they are doing it just despite the guy, therefore I cannot come. Another said I have married a wife, therefore I cannot come. This one, what? Right?

16:18 I mean, there's a lot of things you can say there, but one is he didn't just marry the wife because that would be a big communal banquet. The guy's not planning to banquet the day after the dude married a wife. There'd be a big communal celebration for one. For two, you don't bring up lives in this situation. Like this is just the fact to mention that the wife is the reason he's not coming and is culturally an insult to the sky. So it's all kinds of reasons. Jesus is telling a story. And the people that are there who were expecting Jesus to just go, oh yeah, may God find us at his banquet

16:51 or like what is going on? Why is he telling us this story about these terrible people? Then the master of the house became angry and said to his servant, go quickly to the streets and the lanes of the city and bring in the poor, the crippled and the lane. Nobody would do this. In any other situation, the guy's embarrassed and has no one at his house for the food that he killed, which is what the people wanted. They did not want his hospitality or his offer.

17:24 The banquet owner says, the feast will have its people. Who is ready to come? As I said before, you would not banquet with crippled people, lane people and people on the street because it looks bad at you. Remember when they give Jesus a hard time for saying he meets with a sinner and submit, he's a drunken and a gawt and drunkard and a gawt and he. You don't do that. It reduces your credibility, your access and the, you don't do it. But the banquet host does this.

17:57 Whoever wants my hospitality to come, you don't want it fine. I'll give it to the people that do. And he gives it to the outpass and the marginalized. So the servant came and reported, okay, go out quickly to poor, crippled, verse 22. And the servant said, sir, what you commanded has been done and there is still room. And the master said to the sir, well then go to the highways and the hedges

18:27 and compel people to come in. Okay, he went inside the town first, got all the marginalized of the people inside the camp. People who are one of them. And he still had room and his banquet. The banquet is larger than anyone who in town wants to come. There's still room. So he says, go out and get the people from other towns, other cities, other merchants. Like get people from the hedgeways, the highways and the bioways,

19:00 go out everywhere and bring people into this banquet. Because I got room and whoever wants to come can come. Sir, sir, what you commanded has been done and there's still room in the master said to the servant, go to the highways and the hedges and compel people to come in that my house may be filled. Before I tell you that none of those who were invited shall taste my banquet. This comes up a couple of times this teaching,

19:31 but Jesus does it right here in the midst of this banquet. People that are experiencing the hospitality of this host, who have the notion of the great banqueting feast already in their mind. I mean, they said it out loud. That the story of the God of creation and lights, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and now the God of Christ in the church is that there's coming a day where he vanquishes all enemies and all problems. He resolves all questions and raises all security so that infinite rest and flourishing comes to people.

20:06 And in the midst of that, he'll throw a banqueting feast. They have this notion and to those people, Jesus tells the story of a banqueting feast that people turn down. We have this like uncomfortable relationship in the world, especially in our little space in the world with any kind of judgment or exclusion at all. People are fine with the idea of Jesus of Nazareth

20:38 as long as he's not exclusive. As long as he's not an only option. And so we start trying to think through in what way is Jesus the same? In what way is there no exclusion of anyone? In what way is everyone included? When you see the perspective of the banquet host,

21:08 the banquet host in the story of Jesus is interested that everyone come to the banquet. Everyone is interested that everyone come to the banquet. And yet some people don't want to go to the banquet. And the banquet host is fine. Don't.

21:39 I mean. This notion about going out to the highways and the byways is why we get to Isaiah chapter 49. Isaiah chapter 49 verse six. Because people want to understand why, what's the, it's very clear. This is like the vineyard store. It's very clear this idea that Jesus is talking about the banqueting feast of God.

22:11 And so God is this host of the banqueting feast and he sends people to the blind and the cripple inside the town. It's very easy to imagine talking about people inside of Israel. But then when he sends them outside of town to the highways and the byways and the hedges, there's this notion is Jesus saying he is for everyone. And the author of the book talks about this parable being what he calls a midrash of Isaiah 49.

22:45 Isaiah 49 verse six. Is it too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel? I will make you as a light for the nations that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth. Thus says the Lord, the redeemer of Israel and his holy one. To one deeply despise the poor by the nation. The servants kings shall see and arise. princes and they shall frost themselves

23:17 because the Lord who is faithful, the holy one of Israel has chosen you. This idea that the salvation of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is offered and extended to all. So that this parable has two things happening. Exclusion and radical inclusion. Uniquely, Jesus is saying the God of creation and life, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob that finds its fulfillment in Christ and the church

23:49 is for the whole world. Israel and Gentile, right? The whole world is welcome at the banquet and also some will find themselves not at the banquet. The last thing to look at here, and Luke. He says, when he sends them out to the streets,

24:23 verse 23, and the master said to the servant, go to the highways and the hedges and compel people to come in, that my house made me still. I like to have a little bit of trouble with that. I have had a little bit of trouble with that and that's where this like cultural punch really helps me out. Remember that the first invitee's got two invitations at least. They got the one at the beginning

24:54 when he was deciding what to kill, then they got another one when they come and say, now's the time, come on in. The author is saying, there was someone in town maybe say an Israelite in town, hosting a great banquet with a table and a killed animal that has servants to dispatch to invite people.

25:27 And you're some dude walking around on the highway, hiding in the hedges, some Gentile is not an Israelite. And the servant comes up and says, hey man, so and so my master would love for you to come to the banquet. He's like, it would be customary for you, even if you're just being polite, to turn that invitation down for 15 minutes. Like that is entirely too good.

25:58 It cannot be true. And so the host of the banquet says, you're going to have to compel those jokers. Very lightly, you're going to have to tell them, this, look, I'm serious, come with me. You're going to have to take them by the hands because the invitation to the banqueting feast is too good to be true. You are. You have an unmitigated,

26:31 open-ended invitation to the banqueting feast of the God. Like that original banquet, like Isaiah chapter 49, like the unbounded infinite God, whisper into the ear of the prophet, speak and horrible to the people recorded for generations, preserved for thousands of years, resurrected in the story of Jesus at the banqueting feast, preserved again, passed down from one generation to the next so that you would know

27:02 that there is coming a banqueting feast when everything is set to right and in the midst of all rights and the end of all wrong, you have a feast prepared for you and your friends and it is so good, it'll be hard to believe. You'll be sure all your problems are more pressing. I assure you they are not. Whenever you have the opportunity,

27:34 set aside the worry of the world and allow yourself to believe at least for moments in fits and starts that God has secured a final resting for you where he swallows up death and lays a feast before you. That your admittance is through the feast is based on his parake.

28:05 You could be blind, lame, poor, homeless, foreigner, wealthy, landed, married, single. It doesn't matter, thinner saint. The host of the banqueting feast welcomes all. The only people left on the outside of the feast are the ones who don't want it. And I want it.

28:39 I'm telling you, the reality of the banqueting feast animates the direction of my life. It informs large and small decisions. It wakes me up, it puts me to bed There are lots of problems in between those two things, but the guiding light for me is the banqueting feast of God.

29:12 Jesus draws it out beautifully for us here. Let me pray that we could be people guided by that. Hey Lord, make us into your people this morning, your banqueters. Put the challenges of the days and the years into perspective that we would not myopically turn down more constant than persistence and invitation. Let's be found in your rest

29:44 and maybe a forte's today of the feast to come. In Jesus' name we pray.