At the church where I serve, we are spending the
next eight weeks in a sermon series entitled living on mission. During this time
our hope and our prayer is equip and empower followers of Jesus to live their
day to day lives on mission as a missionary to those that God has already
placed in our spheres of influence who are far from God in a way that reveals
and reflects Jesus to them.
Now if you do not buy the whole Jesus, Bible, church
thing and are not sure about whether or not there is a God, let alone whether
you should follow Him or live for Him, here’s the thing. What you will discover
during this series is that there is a way that those who are followers of Jesus
are supposed to live. And there is a way that followers of Jesus are supposed
to talk about the claims that Jesus made about who He was and what He came to
earth to do.
And my hope for you is that you would see what Jesus
calls His followers to so that you can see how He feels about you and what He
calls His followers to do when it comes to engaging you. That way, you can cut
through the bad experiences that you have had with Jesus followers to see the
truth when it comes to what Jesus calls His followers to be truly about as they
live around you.
Now, this week, I would like for us to look at a
section of an account of Jesus life that is recorded for us in the Bible called
the gospel of Luke. In the section of the gospel of Luke that we are going to
jump into, Jesus was in the house of one of the leaders of the Pharisee’s, who
were the self righteous religious people of the day. The reason why Jesus was
at the house was because He had been invited over for dinner.
However, the Pharisee’s did not invite Jesus over
for dinner to get to know Jesus. Instead, the Pharisee’s, like so many self
righteous religious people, were trying to set Jesus up so that they could
catch Jesus breaking one of their religious rules. After breaking one of their
religious rules by healing a man, Jesus decided that it was time to turn the
tables on them. And to turn the tables on them, Jesus tells a series of
parables.
Now a parable is an earthly story that is designed
to reveal a deeper spiritual truth. And it is in these parables that we will
see Jesus reveal for us a timeless truth when it comes to living on mission. So
let’s look together at these parables, beginning in Luke 14:7:
And He began speaking a parable to the
invited guests when He noticed how they had been picking out the places of
honor at the table, saying to
them, "When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not take the
place of honor, for someone more distinguished than you may have been invited
by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, 'Give your place to this man,' and then in
disgrace you proceed to occupy the last place. "But when you are invited,
go and recline at the last place, so that when the one who has invited you
comes, he may say to you, 'Friend, move up higher'; then you will have honor in
the sight of all who are at the table with you. "For everyone who exalts
himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."
Now to fully understand the significance of this parable,
let’s take a minute and place ourselves at this dinner party that Jesus had
been invited to. You see, as Jesus looked around at what was happening at this
dinner party, He made an observation about the hearts of the self righteous
religious people that were at the party. As the dinner party was going on,
Jesus observed how everyone was picking out the places of honor at the dinner
table. In the culture of the day, these would be the seats that were located
next to the master of the house or the host of the dinner party. These were the
VIP seats.
Now can you picture in your mind what that must have
looked like? Jesus, after making this observation, begins His series of
parables. Jesus explains that instead focusing on trying to get the VIP seats,
the focus should be on occupying the last place. In the culture of the day, the
last place at a dinner party or wedding reception was the seat that was located
in the corner, furthest away from the master of the house or the host. These
were the seats that were the last to be filled; you did not want to sit in the
last place. These were the obstructed view tickets in the upper deck.
Jesus then explains that the reason why one should shoot
for those seats is due to the fact that there is nowhere to go but up. I mean
the person who invited you can only move you to a better seat. However, if you
try to vie for the VIP seats, the person who invited you could decide that you
are not worthy of those seats and publicly remove you from those seats. And as
you might imagine, that would be quite embarrassing. You would be disgraced
publicly, wouldn’t you?
However, If you are sitting far away from the VIP seats
in the obstructed view seats and the person who invited you searches you out
and places you in the VIP seats, you would be honored in front of everyone
else, wouldn’t you? Of course you would.
Jesus then hammers this point home with a powerful
statement: "For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who
humbles himself will be exalted." Jesus point in this parable is that the
person who considers themselves better than others and looks down on others by
attempting to seize position, power, and glory for themselves will have the
position, power, and glory that they attempted to seize taken away from them by
God. By contrast, the person who has a humble attitude, the person who places
others before themselves will have their reputation enhanced by God as a result
of their attitude towards others.
So here is the hard question
when it comes to living on mission: Do you consider yourself better than those
around you that are far from God? Do you look down on others as you attempt to
seize position, power, and glory for yourself? Because that is what self
righteous religious people do.
However, as Jesus makes
abundantly clear in this parable, God is the One who extends the invitation to
be on mission. God is the One who will decide who will receive prestige and
honor as a result of how they engage in the mission. And those who humbly place
others before themselves as they engage them will be the ones that God honors.
Tomorrow, we will see Jesus
continues tell a second parable…
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