CHAPTER 14

(A.D. 33)

SABBATH

¹And it came to pass, as He went into the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread on the Sabbath Day (concerns a very influential Rabbi, or even possibly a member of the vaunted Sanhedrin), that they watched Him (suggests that this man was not a guest, but was brought there purposely by the Pharisees in order to accuse Jesus of Sabbath-breaking if He healed him).

²And, behold, there was a certain man before Him which had the dropsy (has reference to a disease causing swelling due to excess water).

³And Jesus answering spoke unto the Lawyers and Pharisees, saying (proclaims Jesus instantly recognizing the situation, and immediately judging the hypocrisy, which broke the Sabbath when their own interests were involved), Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath Day? (He turns the trap on their own heads.)

⁴And they held their peace (means they did not know what to say). And He (Jesus) took him (means that He zeroed in on the man, so there would be absolutely no doubt what was being done), and healed him, and let him go (means that his healing was instantaneous, and easily observable by all; in other words, even miraculously, the excess fluid in the mans body disappeared; He did not let him go until the effects of this healing were obvious to all);

⁵And answered them, saying, Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway (immediately) pull him out on the Sabbath Day? (The Lord was not criticizing them for doing such a thing, but rather their hypocrisy in condemning Him for a greater and nobler act.)

⁶And they could not answer Him again to these things (their silence was the better part of wisdom; to have answered it at all would have shown them up even worse than they already looked).

HUMILITY

⁷And He put forth a Parable to those which were bidden (refers to the invited guests of this feast, which is obvious were the wealthy class), when He marked how they chose out the chief rooms (after the healing of the man was completed, the invited guests were called to be seated for the banquet; evidently, there was an obvious scurrying for the chief seats); saying unto them,

⁸When you are bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room (actually strikes at the very heart of these hypocrites, which was a love of praise as well as place and position); lest a more honourable man than you be bidden of him (positions the Believer in Gods Hands, instead of the hands of self-seeking);

⁹And He who bade you and him come and say to you, Give this man place; and you begin with shame to take the lowest room (the one who seeks self-willed position will ultimately be forsaken by the Lord, or put down by the Lord; this is a shame that can be avoided by letting the Lord do the doing; in other words, the Believer is to refrain from self-promotion).

¹⁰But when you are bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room (is the place and position that the truly God-called will always take; to do so lets the Lord chart the course); that when He who bade you comes, He may say unto you, Friend, go up higher (places the Lord in the position of Leader and Guide): then shall you have worship in the presence of them who sit at meat with you (the idea in all of this is, many do not advance because they do not allow the Lord to do the advancing, but seek to do such themselves).

¹¹For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased (this speaks of self-exaltation, which the Lord cannot tolerate; its end result will always be abasement); and he who humbles himself shall be exalted (humility, which can only come by a proper understanding of the Cross, is the requirement for advancement by the Lord).

THE WEDDING FEAST

¹²Then said He also to him who bade Him (who invited Him to the Feast; the previous Parable had been spoken to the guests, while this is spoken to the host), When you make a dinner or a supper, call not your friends, nor your brethren, neither your kinsmen, nor your rich neighbours; lest they also bid you again, and a recompence be made to you (it is not the activity that is condemned, but rather its purpose).

¹³But when you make a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind (that is, if you really want to do something good for people):

¹⁴And you shall be blessed (is a single Promise given by God, with His Word standing as surety); for they cannot recompense you (the idea is if we really want to be blessed by the Lord, we are to do good things for people who, in turn, cannot do good things for us; that is Christlike, because He has done so much for us when we, in turn, could not do anything for Him): for you shall be recompensed at the resurrection of the just (proclaims the fact that God keeps the account of all things and, to be sure, every good thing, at least that which He labels as good, will be rewarded at the Resurrection, i.e., the Judgment Seat of Christ).

¹⁵And when one of them who sat at meat with Him heard these things, he said unto Him (proclaims a total lack of knowledge about what the Lord was saying), Blessed is he who shall eat bread in the Kingdom of God (by using the word blessed, and directing it toward himself, this Pharisee loudly trumpets his self-righteousness; the Lords answer will be very revealing, as we shall see).

THE GREAT SUPPER

¹⁶Then said He unto him, A certain man made a great supper, and bade many:

¹⁷And sent his servant at supper time to say to them who were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready (was the Message of both John the Baptist and Christ concerning entrance into the Kingdom of God).

¹⁸And they all with one consent began to make excuse (proclaimed Israel then, and regrettably most of the Church now!). The first said unto Him, I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go and see it: I pray you have me excused (the purchase of the ground wasnt wrong, but the self-interest was wrong).

¹⁹And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them: I pray you have me excused (as the previous was self-interest, this one was that of self-will).

²⁰And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come (this spoke of self-love).

²¹So that servant came, and showed his Lord these things (Jesus is the servant, and the Lord is the Heavenly Father). Then the Master of the house being angry said to His servant (proclaims the Just Anger of God over the rejection by Israel to the great invitation to enter the Kingdom of God), Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind (this is an apt description of the Gentile world, spiritually speaking! but out of this came the Church).

²²And the servant said, Lord, it is done as You have commanded, and yet there is room (proclaims the vastness of the Gospel Message; what Jesus did at Calvary was sufficient to cleanse the stain of every sin, of every human being in the entirety of the world, and for all time, at least for those who will come; yet, there is room).

²³And the Lord said unto the servant (proclaims Jesus as being the Light of the World), Go out into the highways and hedges (the Gospel must be taken to the entirety of the world), and compel them to come in (there is a compelling force about the Gospel when it is preached under the Anointing of the Spirit), that My house may be filled (irrespective of the fall of Israel, the Plan of God will not be thwarted; His House will be filled!).

²⁴For I say unto you, That none of those men which were bidden (and wouldnt come) shall taste of My supper (this is the answer of Christ to the statement of the man of Verse 15).

DISCIPLESHIP

²⁵And there went great multitudes with Him (proclaims Him having left the home of this Pharisee, and now continuing His journey toward Jerusalem): and He turned, and said unto them (He was anxious now, at the end, clearly to make it known to all these multitudes what serving Him really signified),

²⁶If any man come to Me (no exceptions), and hate (prefer) not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also (no affection, however strong, must be permitted to compete with or displace Christ), he cannot be My Disciple (once again, no exceptions!).

²⁷And whosoever does not bear his Cross (this doesnt speak of suffering as most think, but rather ever making the Cross of Christ the Object of our Faith; we are Saved and we are victorious not by suffering, although that sometimes will happen, or any other similar things, but rather by our Faith, but always with the Cross of Christ as the Object of that Faith), and come after Me (one can follow Christ only by Faith in what He has done for us at the Cross; He recognizes nothing else), cannot be My Disciple (the statement is emphatic!; if its not Faith in the Cross of Christ, then its faith that God will not recognize, which means that such people are refused [I Cor. 1:17-18, 21, 23; 2:2; Rom. 6:3-14; 8:1-2, 11, 13; Gal. 6:14; Eph. 2:13-18; Col. 2:14-15]).

COUNTING THE COST

²⁸For which of you, intending to build a tower (is the example that Jesus will use in order to explain the Cross-bearing, Christ-following life), sits not down first, and counts the cost (this is not meant that we can earn Salvation, but rather that there will be a price to pay for the acceptance of Christ and the Cross; sadly, most of the opposition will come from the Church, exactly as it came from Israel in Jesus day), whether he have sufficient to finish it? (This proclaims that the race must be finished, before it can be said to have been run. This completely refutes the unscriptural doctrine of Unconditional Eternal Security.)

²⁹Lest haply, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, (regrettably, millions do not finish this race, i.e., tower) all who behold it begin to mock Him (in the spiritual sense, which Jesus intends here, the far greater degree of mocking will come from Satan himself and his evil spirits),

³⁰Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish (not only does the Lord monitor our progress constantly, but Satan and his cohorts do as well).

³¹Or what king, going to make war against another king (Jesus continues to use illustrations from everyday life which are familiar to all), sits not down first, and consults whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? (This type of invitation is a far cry from the majority of the invitations given today regarding the acceptance of Christ. Presently it is, come to Christ and get rich! But the Message of Jesus was and is, come to Christ, and face the opposition of the world and of organized religion.)

³²Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends an ambassador, and desires conditions of peace (unfortunately, the modern Church has made peace with Satan; this means they have forsaken Christ and the Cross; however, the peace they have is a false peace).

³³So likewise, whosoever he be of you who forsakes not all that he has, he cannot be My Disciple (the key to victory regarding the world is the gathering of great resources to oneself; however, the key to this spiritual conflict is the very opposite, the forsaking of all that one has; this refers to a denial of dependence on self, and total trust being placed in Christ and what He has done for us at the Cross).

³⁴Salt is good (salt seasons and preserves, and so does the true Believer): but if the salt have lost his savour (refers to salt no longer being salty, and consequently, good for nothing), wherewith shall it be seasoned? (This means that there is no alternative to Christ. He and the Word are the saltiness of the salt. If that be removed from Israel, which it was, then Israel was of no more use. It is the same presently with individuals.)

³⁵It is neither fit for the land (means that it can no longer serve its intended purpose, because it no longer has that which gives it purpose), nor yet for the dunghill; but men cast it out (many things, if not used for their intended purpose, can be used elsewhere; however, the savorless Christian does not fall into that category, actually becoming totally worthless). He who has ears to hear, let him hear (meaning that only those who have spiritual ears will hear what He is saying and, thereby, understand it).