to you all. My name is Britton Brewer. I'm the associate pastor here at Reformation Covenant Church. If you're visiting with us today, it's a pleasure to have you worshiping with us. We are continuing in our series through Luke. The gospel reading this morning is our sermon text. And before we jump in, let's pray and ask the Lord's help that He would open our eyes to see wonderful things out of His law. Merciful Father, we thank you for your word, and we thank you how, in its pages, we find ourselves exposed and revealed. We pray, Father, that as we search your word, as we now tune our hearts and attend to the things that you've given us, that you would help us to see the many ways that we take lightly, or even at all, the blessings and the gifts that you give us in your kingdom. Father, help us to be a people who delight and rejoice in the fact that we get to sit at table with the Lord Jesus himself. that we might be a people not absorbed with ourselves, with what should be due to us, but rather, Father, that we'd be a people obsessed with, compelled by, propelled by that which is due to Christ and all the glory and the honor that he deserves. Help us, Lord, open our eyes to behold wonderful things out of your law. Soften our hearts and soften our minds that we can see you and see Christ and trust you and believe. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen. Well, one of the things that I love about RCC and I've loved about many of the churches that my wife and I have attended since we've been married and even before that was the culture of hospitality that people had. As a young seminarian, I was well-fed by many families. As a young couple, Beth and I were welcomed into people's homes, and even now, so many of you all have let us come in and see and eat a meal with you. One of the things I really love about that, about sharing a meal with somebody, is when you eat a meal with them, you get a glimpse, a small glimpse, but a real glimpse into what the rest of their lives look like. Maybe you've noticed this before when you go to someone's house and you sit at a meal with them and there's laughing and joy and loud talking and gladness. You know that you're sitting with people who, in their day-to-day lives, maybe not as raucous as it is at that table, but still are people that just are a delight to be around. Sometimes you go to a house and not much is said, and they sit there, and that's fine. They may be very happy people. It's not going to have the same aroma, right? And then there are others, other families, where you eat dinner with them and you realize that their normal habit is They probably sit around the TV and this is unnatural for them as you sit around the table and try to talk. My family, that's what we did. We sat around the television and that affected the rest of our lives. Sometimes more alarming things happened around holiday meals. You can ask me about that later in Q&A. But the point is that when you eat a meal with somebody, you're getting a glimpse into what their lives are like. You're getting a glimpse into what the rest of their personhood, the rest of their relationships, what that means. In this passage, what we're given a glimpse of by means of the parable of a banquet is what our lives as a people of God are meant to look like if we are actually members of that kingdom. claim to have a seat at the table with Jesus, this meal even that we're about to enjoy here in just a little bit. What are our lives meant to look like? What's our commitments? What's our disposition? What's the way that we gauge other relationships? What's the way that we gauge repayment and our gifts that we give? How do we think about ourselves? All this is Jesus is addressing in this passage. And it's important for us to understand because we are not anticipating a kingdom. In fact, we have already received the kingdom. And if we claim to be members of this kingdom, that needs to have real and tangible effects on the way that we live the rest of our lives. If we claim to be members of Christ, if we claim to come to his table, a table of love and joy, and there's nothing in our lives that would suggest otherwise, we're missing the fundamental point of what Christ has come to do. So that's what we have before us today. It's a picture of what life in the kingdom ought to look like, a picture of what we must be and what we must be like as we come into Christ's kingdom. The story starts out with another one of these Sabbath controversies. This is now the fourth Sabbath controversy that we've seen in the Gospel of Luke, and I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on it. I know last time we saw a Sabbath controversy, you guys have probably had enough about the Sabbath, but it's important to understand, as we come into this, that we're coming into another Sabbath controversy where Jesus is being confronted by improper expectations of what the kingdom was thought to be. This entire scenario, this entire scene that we'll be looking at, verses 1 through 24, they're framed by this scene at a dinner table. They're framed by a scene in the dinner table. Now, this should bring us back a little bit to one of the things we talked about last week. If you recall in our sermon last week, we ended with a picture of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and the prophets and people from all over, north, south, east, and west, coming to gather around a meal. Now, this picture of a meal was a very important picture in Judaism at the time throughout the Old Testament. It was thought that Messiah, when he comes, is going to inaugurate the most delightful, joyous, sumptuous banquet that we've seen. We saw a glimpse of that in Isaiah 25. It says this in verse six, on this mount 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. That's the hope, and even in the rest of Judaism, you can see this in the Dead Sea Scrolls, you can see this in other books around the time that the New Testament is written. When they talk about Messiah, when they talk about God's kingdom coming, it often involves a meal. It often involves actually sitting at the table with Messiah and serving Him or possibly being served by Him. Common anticipation, common expectation, but the question is what is that like? What does that mean? And for Luke, it's this picture of a banquet and Jesus' work that serves as the perfect example and analogy of the life that He gives. We're going to look at this passage in just the four sections. It breaks down pretty nicely. Verses 1-6, verses 7-11, 12-14, and then verses 15-24. So let's start with this first section here. We're jumping right in. It tells us that one Sabbath when he went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, They were watching him carefully. This is not the first time that we've seen Jesus around a meal with the Pharisees. This has actually happened two other times. It happens first in Luke 7, gathers around a meal with the Pharisees and the lawyers. And at that table setting, who comes in but the sinful woman? And the Pharisees say, if this Jesus was a prophet, he'd really know what kind of woman this was. And they implied by that that he wouldn't want anything to do with her. The next scene that we have of a meal around the table with the Pharisees is in chapter 11, which is when Jesus eats a meal with the Pharisees. And then right after the meal, he begins to cast woes upon the Pharisees and the lawyers. Now right after that scene is when it tells us that the Pharisees and the lawyers began to oppose him fiercely and to besiege him with questions, waiting to catch him in something he might say. So even though he's at the table with Pharisees right now, this is not necessarily a friendly gathering. They're very much opposed to whatever Jesus is doing, and the important thing that comes up If you look at these meal scenes, each of them involves Jesus correcting something about the Pharisees and the lawyers. He's correcting their misperception. He's correcting their misunderstanding. And one of the things Luke seems to be doing, as some have noted, is that these table fellowship scenes with the Pharisees are being set up as rival and counter banquets, counter meals, to the meal that Jesus has come to bring. Okay, so the question that Jesus essentially is presenting whenever he shares a meal with the Pharisees is, are you going to stay here? Are you gonna stay at your meal and do what you wanna do? Are you going to be a participant in the meal that I bring? Are you going to welcome this sinful woman? Are you going to actually understand what the law requires of you? Are you going to repent and move away from your perversion, from your self-interest, from your pride and your arrogance, that's the options that he presents them. Stay at your meal or come to my meal, okay? In this setting, the problem seems not to have resolved itself because we're told that there's a man who comes who has dropsy. Dropsy is a condition where you fill up with fluid Jesus responds, interestingly, they're not saying anything, but he responds as if, again, he's correcting them, saying, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not? We've seen this question before. What is the Sabbath about? And as Pastor Bo really told us well a couple of weeks ago, The Sabbath is meant to be God's reign of righteousness restoring everything. It's meant to bring life. It's meant to bring healing. It's meant to be a day of mercy and justice and life. It's not meant to be a day where you hold these things back. It's not meant to be a day where you do what you want to do despite what other people need. He asked them this too, is it lawful? Because these are the experts in the law. They should be the ones who know what is actually lawful and what is not lawful. Now, according to much of the rabbinic tradition, it wasn't lawful to heal on the Sabbath, depending on what you meant by that. But according to the Old Testament, the actual law, it was lawful to heal. In fact, this is the very thing that the Sabbath has been pointing to. And so when Jesus asked them, is it lawful? He's actually exposing their lack of knowledge, their continued misunderstanding. They think they know God's will. They think they know what the banquet of Messiah should look like, and they have absolutely no idea. They have distorted it. They've contorted it. They've made it into their own image, and they're missing what it is that Jesus has come to do. And that's why it says they remained silent. They have no answer. But Jesus heals him. He sends the man on his way. And he asks him a question, which of you having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day will not immediately pull him out? Which of you, if you have a problem, if you encounter with your livestock or with your children, they're caught in a bad situation, they need to be unbound, they need to be loose, they need to be freed, which one of you, even if it's a Sabbath day, is just going to let them lie there? Now, interestingly, it doesn't say that the Pharisees do not answer. It doesn't say that the Pharisees refrained from answering. It's much stronger. The text says that they could not reply to these things. They could not. They were unable to. They knew, but what Jesus was saying was right. And they had no response they could give. But remember the theme we've been focusing on these past few weeks, the theme of repentance. What is it that they don't do? They don't repent. They don't change their thinking. All they do is stay silent. They realize Jesus is right, but they don't want to admit it. And they're gonna do anything they can to get rid of this man. They've decided that they want their feasts, regardless of what Jesus says, regardless of what Jesus can do, we don't want to share in him, we want to share in our own meals. And it's interesting to look as you trace the Sabbath controversies, the responses of the leaders of the Jews, because first it says that they're enraged, they're angry at what Jesus would do. The next one it says that they're humiliated, they're put to shame, which of course would no doubt provoke more wrath. But finally now, after being angered and being humiliated, they're dumbfounded. They're dumbfounded at what it is that Jesus has come to do. They have no answer. All they have left is their own self-interest, their own pride, their own vision of what this banquet ought to look like. And Jesus isn't in it. The Messiah himself has been cut out of their vision, and so they want to do whatever they need to do. But the point Jesus is making again and again and again on these Sabbath day controversies is when the kingdom breaks in, it has very little, if anything, to do with the thing you're doing. It has everything to do with what God's doing. has everything to do with the great jubilee. Remember, that's the theme that we're seeing traced throughout Luke. The year of freedom, the year of joy, the year where all burdens will be removed. That's what it means when God's kingdom comes into the world. It's what God is doing, not what you're doing. And the Pharisees don't like that. What we see next, though, is essentially and further meditation on if this is what it means to be in the kingdom of God, that it's about what God is doing, what does that mean? What does it look like when God works? What does it look like when God sets a banquet? What does it look like when God saves people into his kingdom? That's what these next several verses are going to address. And the first thing we see here in verses seven to 11 is that if God is doing something, We're not, and everything we have is because of his grace. Everything we have is not because we have earned it, but everything we have is because God has willingly and lovingly and graciously given it to us. In our next section here, he turns to the fellow guests at the party, and it says that he tells them a parable. What's interesting about this is it actually seems like real advice that he's given them. It doesn't match many of the features of a parable that we would think. Now it does seem that Jesus is telling them this is really how you should behave, but the fact that it's a parable tells us that he's also talking about something much deeper than just etiquette. He's talking about something more significant than the way that you behave when you go to a place. The second thing we see that's interesting about this section, when he tells the parable, is he says that when you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, a wedding feast, it's a very particular kind of event that he has in mind here. There's three things that are interesting about that. The first thing is they're not at a wedding feast, they're just at a dinner. He's put them now by means of a parable into a different situation and wants them to think about it. Second of all, the theme of a wedding feast is one that has all Bible, whole Bible Christians as Pastor Bo likes to say, cover to cover. The wedding feast is a very important image of the final day when God's people will be brought to him. What are we waiting for? Waiting for the marriage supper of the lamb to come. or we actually will be the bride and the guests at this great feast, this great wedding feast that's coming. But the third thing that's interesting about a wedding feast, when you go to a wedding feast, you're going to something that has nothing to do with you. You're going to something where you are not the object of interest. You are not the person of honor. In fact, a wedding feast is one of those gatherings that Always, if you're a guest, has zero to do with your presence there. And your presence is simply a gift to you. Because what is the focus of a wedding feast? It's the bride and it's the groom getting married. Where you sit doesn't matter. It has everything to do with something else going on outside of yourself Now, Jesus, when he addresses them, he says, don't 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'll begin with shame to take the lowest 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." It would seem that at this table, excuse me, at this banquet that he's with, at the Pharisees, these guests were sort of, not that, they weren't falling down, they were eyeing the best spots. They were thinking about what was going to be the primo situation where they could have either the best conversation or sit next to the best people, the most important people, so that they could somehow curry favor with them. We've all done this. Right? We go to a party and we sort of eye the room. If it's open seating and we kind of see the people that we want to sit with or the important people that we want to get their ear for, or maybe we just want to be in on the action and we sort of just nonchalantly. We don't want to be perceived as selfish or as strategic. We just kind of nonchalantly making our way over and sit down. We want to be in the middle of everything. Even more important for us, though, was that here, the seating mattered a great deal. You would have guests of honor, and the people who were around them were more honored because they sat by these important situations. A friend of mine is getting married in some time, in the next six months or so, and he's very good friends with a world-famous theologian. And he's told me that he's going to put me by him. And I can't tell you how that made my day. And I'm so excited. I'm going to be the guy sitting next to Oliver O'Donovan. You don't even know who that is. That's how nerdy we are. I'm going to be the guy sitting next to Oliver O'Donovan, and I feel good. I want to be able to talk to Oliver O'Donovan. We want that. All of us, we behave that way, and Jesus is zeroing in on that. And actually what he's doing is he's zeroing in on a certain way of thinking that is alien to the kingdom. Okay, and here's what it is. It's that way of thinking that says, hey, if I go up, you have to go down. And the only way that I can get ahead is if I leave people in my dust, or maybe I have to maneuver, and maybe I have to machinate, and maybe I have to do all sorts of things to win at this game. It's a zero-sum game where you lose and I win, or you win and I lose. And Jesus is saying, absolutely, that has nothing to do with the kingdom of God. In fact, it's just the opposite. It's just the opposite. What Jesus says, everyone who exalts himself will be humbled. And he who humbles himself will be exalted. Now this is not new to Jesus. This is actually a regular theme throughout the Old Testament. God opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. The lawyers, the people there, they should have known this. And what are they doing? They're behaving just like everyone else. trying to win influence, trying to gain a step ahead, trying to play the game of the world when they know what the law says. God opposes the proud and he gives grace to the humble. How much of our lives can fall into that category? Where I think or you think or all of us think that we're competing. The more you get, the less I get. If I want to be somebody, I need to leave a pile of bodies behind me. I'm gonna do whatever it takes. Now, we don't like those people, right? We don't want to be those people, and yet we can't deny that so often our hearts tend to think that way. If you're competitive by nature, maybe even more, you know you're not supposed to, but you do. And you think that it's up to you to gain glory and prestige and honor. And the thing you want to do most is also the thing you know that you shouldn't do. You want to tell everybody. You want to brag about it. You want to boast about it. You want to be seen. You want to be heard. You want to be that guy taken in the pictures when the glamour magazines go out. You want to be known. You want to be respected. You want glory. Well, Jesus is saying, the economy of the kingdom, the way that this works is actually completely different than the way the world works. The world is a rat race filled with all manner of evil, filled with all manner of people who are striving for the same things, and the kingdom, It's the type of meal where actually the people in the lowest spots, the people who humble themselves, the people who know that they have no right to be there. They can't make any claim. Those are the people, Jesus says, that are going to be glorified. And this is the thing that Jesus has come to do from the very beginning. If you have your Bibles, you might turn chapter one, Verse 52, when Mary being confronted by the angel and she responds in song, this is one of the things that she says God has come to do. He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate. This is the very thing that Jesus came to do, to bring those people who are in the low spots up to the high spots. And all the people who vied for honor and vied for glory according to the world, he's come to humble them. In this verse right here in verse 11, the voice that is active or passive is really important to note. The one who exalts himself will be humbled, it's passive. The one who humbles himself will be exalted, passive. This is what's called a theological passive in hermeneutics because it's implied that the one who's doing the humbling and the one who's doing the exalting is God himself. So in our lives, if our vision is to glorify ourselves, to prop ourselves up, to seek after the things that we want, Jesus is saying, God is going to humble you. You know that Johnny Cash song, God's Gonna Cut You Down? Some of us listen to that thinking, yeah, he will, and we don't realize we're singing it about ourselves. It's actually a great, if you watch the music video, a bunch of the people singing, they're singing this video, they're lip syncing to it, and ironically, the very types of people that Johnny Cash describes are the people who sing that song in the video, and that's us. How often do we want God's justice and we don't realize that we're actually calling it down on ourselves because we have taken upon ourselves to receive glory from men? our pride of life, desire for possessions, that's what's driven us. But Jesus says, hey, if you do that, you will be humbled by none other than God himself. But if you do the opposite, if you humble yourself, if you realize that the kingdom does not rely on or depend upon your effort, your energy, your exertion, your honor, your pride, in fact, you have nothing to do with it, your place there is a gift, if that's your thought, if that's your thinking, God himself is going to glorify you. God himself is going to exalt you in ways that you cannot imagine, with glory that far surpasses any glory that you can get from the hands of men. That's the first thing we see. So, okay, Jesus talks to those people who have been invited, and then he turns his attention to the host. This would seem almost like a passive-aggressive dig, perhaps, But it's not, what he's trying to do is he's trying to lovingly correct this man because he sees the same logic that was at work in the guests at work in his host. He says this, 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. Jesus, he's probably looking around at the guests and he's seeing the highfalutin players of society. And he's seeing a bunch of people who know the host and he knows that what this man has done is essentially a means of currying favor with those around him. He's done this so that he can get paid back. And this is in fact one of the ways that the ancient society worked. It was called benefaction or reciprocity is basically all of society worked on this basic principle that I give you a gift and you give me a gift in return. Whatever that gift may be, I give a gift and you give a gift. A very significant and important aspect of this was it was not uncommon for a wealthy person to give a great deal of money or resources to a city and the return gift of the city was an inscription, a giant stone or metal slab that would write out, because of the gracious benefaction of such and such, we praise him and he is worthy of all honor, et cetera, et cetera. The thing they repaid with was honor, glory, renown. Otherwise, little gifts would be given and other gifts would be given in return, and that's the way this worked. To break that cycle was actually to undermine the entire principle of the society. And Jesus sees this principle working there. that the reason you're doing this, the reason you're throwing this banquet, the reason you're having these people at your home is actually because you just want to get paid back, because you want to get something in return. And again, just like we saw previously, this too, Jesus is saying, is alien to the kingdom of God. In fact, the kingdom of God works on a completely different system than I give and you give. It works on a completely different system. Now we, oftentimes, you know, we don't have the same sort of gift-giving system that made up the ancients' life, but we very much have principles of reciprocity, principles of give and take, that govern the way we do things. I can't give in before this person does, because what happens if they don't give back? I can't relent, I can't repent first, because if I do and they don't, I'm left with nothing. When you're in a fight with your wife, the last thing you want to do is repent until they repent. I'll repent when they repent. You give, then I'll give back. It's the same principle. And it's driven by the thought that the thing that matters is that I get back what I put in. I get back what I put in right now, right here. Whatever that might be, whether it's an emotional investment, whether it's repentance, whether it's forgiveness, whatever, whether it's even a financial investment. That same thinking clouds us And when Jesus, when he confronts them, he says this, you're inviting all these people to be paid back. Here's who I want you to invite. Here's who I really want you to host. I want you to give a feast for the poor, for the crippled, for the lame, for the blind. And get this, they won't be able to pay you back. They won't be able to do anything for you. They're not gonna be able to even give you the most meager gift in return, but guess what? You will be blessed. You will be blessed. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just. Notice what Jesus is doing. He's saying, when you give, when you serve, when you love, The last thing you need to be expecting and to be driven by and to be motivated by is the thought that the other person's going to give back. Actually, he says, the person you're going to get a reward from, the person who's going to be repaying you is God himself at the end of time. What does this mean? It means two things. First of all, there is no lost gift in the kingdom. There is no wasted act of grace or mercy. You may feel it. It may feel like your words are falling on deaf ears. It may feel like you've not been thanked once in the 20 years you've been serving RCC. But there is no wasted gift. There's no wasted grace. There's no wasted display of compassion. Peter Lightheart, mentioning it again, now twice on a Sunday, in his book, Gratitude, which I highly recommend, it's a fabulous book, talks about what Jesus does is he actually gives us what he calls an infinite circle. An infinite circle, because in the gift-giving world, here's what happens. I give, then you complete that circle by giving back. I give and you give back. I give and you give back. And that circle can be bigger, or that circle can be smaller. However, it relies on me giving and you giving back. What Peter Lightheart notes is that when Jesus says this, in fact, in all of Jesus' ministry, what he does is he actually makes a circle that never ends. Because, here's what happens, in Jesus' economy, in the economy of the kingdom, No matter how much you give, regardless of if someone never pays you back, regardless if you never get anything in return in this life, it will be brought back around by God. The circle will be completed by God himself. So you can keep giving, and keep giving, and keep giving, and keep giving, and keep giving. Because no matter how much you give, no matter how big that circle gets, No, how much exertion you pour in, God is going to reward you. We don't like the language of rewards, but Jesus is very clear. When you do that, when you look to God as the one who will repay you, that opens you up, brothers and sisters, to the biggest life of service that you can imagine. Because all of a sudden, it doesn't matter what's coming your way. It doesn't matter what he said or she said or what they didn't say or what they didn't give because God's going to reward you. That's the logic of the kingdom. That's the economy of the kingdom. You give and God gives back because you know where the first gift came from and you know who the final gift giver is, God himself. Now very briefly, we're gonna look at this last section, verses 15 through 24. Because this is the summary, the climax of what Jesus is trying to say, and what we're gonna see here is that in this passage, the reason we behave this way, the reason why we don't strive for honor, the reason why we can give and give and give, is because this is the way that God has treated us. This is, what we've received at the hands of God and His kingdom. As Jesus goes on, this man says, blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God. And like we've seen, Jesus' MO is gonna be the same here. He's gonna give a yes and a but. He's gonna correct this man's language. There's two things he's gonna try to correct. The first one is this, yes, blessed are everyone, who will eat bread in the kingdom of God, but you've got the wrong tense. The kingdom's already here. You're already eating bread in the kingdom. This is something that demands something of you right now. And second, do you actually understand what it means to be blessed? Do you actually know what the blessing of the kingdom means? I want us to look at just a few of these things. It tells a story of a man who has a banquet. Apparently he sent out initial invitations and now that the feast's ready, he's sending out second invitations. And one by one, each of these initial invitees decline. For reasons that seem on the surface understandable. One has bought a field, one has bought five yoke of oxen, another one's been married. Justifiable reasons perhaps. But they've denied this invitation. When the servant goes back, The master is enraged. He's enraged because these things, these things that are real blessings, have suddenly become an excuse not to come to the main thing. Man had property, that's good. A man had more property, that's great. A man gets married, even more wonderful. And yet for these people, it was a distraction. It made them miss what the important thing was. They had all sorts of blessings. This is probably referring to the Pharisees and the lawyers most specifically, but the Jews of Jesus' day, they had the promises of God. They had the oracles of God. They had circumcision. They had many blessings. And despite those blessings, they missed what God was actually doing. They missed that the fact that the kingdom had already come in Jesus. Because these people did decline, the master then says to the servant, go out, go out to the streets and the lanes of the city and get the poor, get the crippled, get the blind and the lame. The same kind of people that the host was told to invite. These are the kind of people this master of the house is inviting to his banquet. And in fact, if you go back to Luke chapter six, No, excuse me, chapter seven, when the disciples of John come and ask Jesus, are you the guy we're looking for? Jesus' answer says, hey, the blind see, the lame walk, the poor have been evangelized. So not only is the people that the host is supposed to invite, these are the people that Jesus himself, in his ministry, is engaging, is healing, is restoring. But that's not enough. That's not enough. Because the servant comes back and says, hey, there's still room. We've done that. We've gone to the alleys. We've gone throughout all the city. We've gathered these people. We brought them in. There's still room. And he says this, go out to the highways and the hedges and compel people to come in. Go outside the city. Go to that riffraff, the trash that lives in the highways, that lives on the outskirts, go to the boonies and get any kind of people that you can get and bring them in, because my banquet's going to be full. In fact, they use the language of compel them to come in, compel them. See, the man, when he asks, when he says, blessed are those who eat bread at the kingdom of heaven, kingdom of God, He doesn't realize that what he's saying is that to be blessed means that you, if you're at the kingdom of God, if you're eating bread in the kingdom of God, you have nothing. You bring nothing to the table. In fact, in worldly standards, you might often be considered not blessed but cursed. The people he brings are not the people with resources, the people with quote-unquote blessing. The people he brings are the people who lack everything. The people who have absolutely nothing and no right and no dessert to be there. In this kingdom, in this banquet that God is making, These are the types of people that God draws in. These are the people that God wants at his table. These are the humble that he plans to exalt. These are the gifts that he gives freely and liberally without measure to people who could never pay him back. And in order to recognize the blessing, it means that you recognize that about yourself. But apart from God, you would be that weirdo living in the highway. You would be the slob outside the city streets, probably exposed to the elements and to wildlife, dead in a ditch. But to come into the kingdom means to realize that and to find at this banquet everything you could possibly need, every gift given to you freely, Because God the giver gives and he gives and he gives and he gives. The missionary Jim Elliott said, he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. How many of us actually think that? We say it, we get a smile on our face, we think that's nice. But how many of us actually think that? Because here's the thing, if you are in the kingdom of God, if you're at His banquet table, you've already said, you've already admitted you can't keep anything. You've already admitted it's not yours. I want to give you a picture of what it looks like. What does it mean to know that you're at this banquet? In terms of real life, sometimes the Lord just gives illustrations, and I was thankful to come across this despite its sadness. This is what it looks like, okay? If you're wondering what does it mean to be a person, who sits at the banquet table of heaven to know that they're poor and blind and lame and crippled and have no right to be there. What does it look like? It looks like this. It looks like a man named Carl, Cal, excuse me, Cal Zastrow. Just a few days ago, he along with seven, six other pro-life advocates, they were sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for peacefully protesting abortion. Their charges were a conspiracy against rights. This happened in my hometown of Tennessee. Cal Zastrow and his daughter were two of the people convicted. A complete and despicable act of injustice. Right after the sentencing, Right after he hears that no doubt his life is going to be stripped away from him, he's going to lose things, not only his life, but the life of his daughter and of his friends, here's what Cal's astro said. He stood up and he said, isn't Jesus good? And then he invited his friends and those with him to go out and sing outside. That man, knows that he sits and eats in the kingdom of heaven because he knows he has nothing. And he knows that because he sits with Jesus, he now has everything. That's what it means to be people who find themselves with Christ. Life around the dinner table with Jesus means you have nothing, but because of that, you have everything in Christ, and you can spend and be spent and lose everything, and still know that Jesus loves you, and he has given you everything you need for life in godliness, with or without the things of this world. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that you, in your grace and your goodness, have brought us to sit with you and to eat, and to eat bread at the kingdom of heaven. We pray, Father, that you would give us greater and greater knowledge of this, that because we sit at this table, because we have Jesus as our host, We bring absolutely nothing and yet in Christ we have everything we could possibly imagine. And the logic of this world and the economies of giving and receiving, Lord, none of this applies anymore because we are guests at the greatest and most glorious meal ever and we have been given everything freely by you, our Father. Help us to see this, help us to know this. In the name of Jesus we pray, amen. Our communion holy text this morning comes from Philippians chapter two. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself. By taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father. Amen. As I mentioned in the sermon, this scripture, so many other passages, that God comes to exalt the humble. He comes to lift up those who are downcast. He enriches the poor. He opposes the proud, but He glorifies and He beautifies the meek. And this meal that we're about to enjoy, this meal that we enjoy week after week, This is the place where we come if we want to see what that looks like, for God to glorify the humble, to beautify the meek. Because when we turn to this meal and we learn from it, from scripture, The reason why God's kingdom works the way that it does, what it looks like for the humble to be exalted is the way that the king of this kingdom humbled himself to the point of death and was exalted in return. The apostle Paul tells us that Christ himself, although being God of God, he emptied himself and he took on the form of a servant. He humbled himself to the point of death, and because of that, God has exalted him above every name, and every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. He did this, scripture tells us, so that we, through him, might be made rich, so that we might be brought to his kingdom, that we might have a space at this table, at this banquet, So when we look at this meal, what we learn is that our seat here, our participation, it has nothing to do with us. It has nothing to do with what we've done. In fact, to find a spot here means to realize that you've done nothing to merit an invitation. You've done nothing to earn yourself a place at this table. And all these people around you are in the same boat. We're a bunch of nobodies who've come to the kingdom and the banquet of the king. And when we claim that for ourselves and we understand that, we acknowledge that Christ is the one who has done it all, then we can come to a very humble meal like this. It's just a little bit of bread, it's just a little bit of wine, nothing lavish, nothing extraordinary. And yet we can taste in this meal the most wonderful delights of all. Because it's in this meal that Jesus gives us himself. He gives us everything that he has. And we can taste this meal, we can taste this bread, we can taste this wine, and with calzastre we can say, isn't Jesus good? regardless of what we're doing, regardless of where we are, regardless of our circumstances, isn't Jesus good? Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us keep the peace.