Today we continue in our study of the Lord's teaching in Luke chapter 14. Today we will study the parable, the parable of the Lord's teaching of the great banquet. In Luke chapter 14 we shall read from verses 12 to 24, verses 12 to 24 of Luke chapter 14. Here is another parable of the Lord Jesus, as always rich in meaning, rich in life-giving content.
Luke chapter 14, verses 12 to 24. "Jesus said also to the man who had invited him..." This man who had invited him is already mentioned in verse 1, who is a ruler of the Pharisaic party. He is a Pharisee, and he is not only a Pharisee but also a ruler, that is to say, one of the leaders of the government or of the synagogue. And in verse 12 we read: He said also to the man who had invited him to this supper, "When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your kinsmen or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return, and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just." The word "just" here, translated "just" in the English translation, is the Greek word for "righteous" — the resurrection of the righteous. The RSV, this English translation, is quite inconsistent in this point. It sometimes translates the same word as "righteous," sometimes as "just."
Verse 15. "When one of those who sat at table with him, that is, with the Lord Jesus, heard this, he said to him, 'Blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God.' But Jesus said to him, 'A man once gave a great banquet and invited many. And at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, "Come, for all is now ready." But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, "I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. I pray you, have me excused." And another said, "I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. I pray you, have me excused." And another said, "I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come."
"'So the servant came and reported this to his master. Then the householder in anger said to his servant, "Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and maimed and blind and lame." And the servant said, "Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room." And the master said to the servant, "Go out through the highways and hedges, and compel the people to come in, that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those who were invited shall taste my banquet."'"
Now here is another of these parables of the Lord Jesus, full of riches and full of depth of meaning. The parallel to this passage is in Matthew 22, verses 1 to 14, which we shall not now read. The Matthew passage is slightly different, and it's not strictly a parallel, but contains some points of contact in Matthew 22, verse 1 and following. Now we have already seen that this parable is spoken in the house of a Pharisee. The Pharisees generally as a class, a group of people, rejected the Lord Jesus, but they were not without their interest and their curiosity, and sometime later, a number of them actually turned to the Lord Jesus. And you know that Paul himself, the apostle Paul, was in fact a Pharisee. And here is another Pharisee who seems at least willing to listen to what the Lord Jesus has to say. And that makes a hopeful beginning. And so he invited the Lord Jesus for a meal. And at this meal, the Lord Jesus then goes on to tell the parable.
Now I'll tell you right at the beginning where we are going as far as this parable is concerned. This parable is the parable of the great banquet, the Lord's banquet, or in what is in verse 24 spoken of, "my banquet" — the Lord's banquet. What is a banquet? The banquet, in the biblical terminology, refers to the feast of salvation, what is sometimes called the messianic feast, the feast of the Messiah. It is the feast of salvation, of all those who are saved together, rejoicing together. The picture of a feast is to express the sense of joy, the sense of having something to celebrate. And what is here celebrated at the messianic feast is the celebration of those who have been redeemed. The celebration of salvation. And that is a very beautiful picture.
Now, before he gives this parable, he says a number of things to his host. And we read only from verse 12 onwards, where the Lord Jesus says to this man, this Pharisee, who is a ruler, and therefore a man of some position in society, he says to him, "When you give a dinner or a banquet, don't go about simply inviting the kind of people who you will know that because you invited them, they will invite you back again." So if you invite your friends, your brothers, your kinsmen, that is your relatives, or your rich neighbors — the kind of people that you use invitation to build good relations with. Now, this is a common practice in the world. Why do you invite the person? Because you hope to build a good relationship with the person so that later on you get some business advantages. If you invite your boss often and often have a good relationship, who knows, you might have a salary increase, and who knows, you might get promotion, and so therefore you invite them with the intention of getting some advantage back again. You don't give except with the intention of harvesting something in return. Why? Because your eye is upon some personal, some material gain in some way.
But the Lord Jesus says to this man, if you do it in this way, if you seek an immediate reward in this life and in this world, in this society, then what will happen is that you will not get a reward from God. The Lord's teaching takes a little thinking about. Because we don't think like this. Our thinking is conditioned by the world. We are brainwashed by the world. And that is to say, the only worthwhile transaction is the transaction out of which we get some profit. Therefore, if I invite a person, I calculate what kind of advantage I get out of inviting him. If this fellow is not going to be of any advantage to me, then I don't intend to invite him because it's a waste of money. I mean, food is expensive these days. You have to give time. You have to prepare the food, and all this is not worthwhile unless you can get something back in return. That is our kind of thinking. But that is not Jesus' way of thinking.
What is Jesus' way of thinking? Well, he tells the man in verse 13: "But when you give a feast" — not just an ordinary meal; when you give a feast, that is a very expensive meal to have a feast — he says, "what you do is invite who? Invite the poor, the maimed, the blind, the lame, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you." Remember last week we saw those words of the Lord Jesus in Acts chapter 20 and verse 35: "It is more blessed to give than to receive." And we saw that this kind of thinking is simply not our way of thinking. But this is the way of thinking that the Lord Jesus wants us to learn. Now, when you invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind — in Israel, the maimed, the lame, the blind — they were not on social welfare. There was no such thing as social welfare. These were the poor of society. These were the people that because of their physical disabilities could not work and therefore could not earn a decent living. They were often depending on charity to survive.
But the Lord Jesus says, "You go out and you invite the poor." Why? Precisely because they cannot repay you. "Well, what's the advantage that they can't repay me? No, I just precisely want to invite those people who can repay me." But you see, the way of God's thinking is exactly the opposite of man's thinking. If you want to know how God thinks, just reverse man's thinking around 180 degrees, turn it around, turn it on its head, and you will know how God thinks. That's the simple way to discover how God's way of thinking is. It's always the opposite of our thinking. If you have a certain decision that this is a good idea, it is very likely that the opposite idea is better. Because your first idea is likely to be your own carnal, selfish idea. For example, if somebody is unkind to you, immediately you feel resentful. Relax. You should be giving thanks instead of being resentful, because if you are unfairly treated, the Lord tells us, you have God on your side. He is a God of justice. He will vindicate you. What's better than to have God on my side? So go ahead. Do me an injustice. Stamp on my toe. Then you will find that God is on my side.
But what do I discover? Christians have not learned to think this way. Whenever we have been wronged, we feel bitter, resentful. "They are unfair, and God is unfair. Why does God allow this to happen to me?" Precisely because he is going to be ready to pour his grace upon you that he allows it to happen to you. When you think that way, it's so hard to think that way. You see, the Bible is God's way of thinking, not man's way of thinking. Man cannot write this book. He can't even understand it, let alone write it. We cannot even understand the teaching of the Lord Jesus, let alone produce it. That in itself is the guarantee that Jesus has come from above, as he himself says. His thinking is utterly different. It is so revolutionary to us that we cannot grasp it. It is God-centered.
Next time that somebody in your office or in your school is unfair to you, thank God for it, because now you know that God is on your side. You have been wronged. Don't go and square the issue. If you square the issue, you have lost the chance for God to be on your side. This is all behind the thing. If somebody slaps you on the face, you slap him back, you have settled the score. But if he slaps you and you haven't slapped him back, he owes you one. And God is going to be on your side. Now if you don't understand that, you say, "That's not fair. Why should I stand here being slapped?" Of course, because you don't see God. If you saw God, you would say, "Hallelujah, here's the other side. Now you owe me two. I've got God for two counts on my side. You just carry on at this rate, and I'll have God on all counts on my side." That's hard to think. It's because this kind of thinking is God-centered.
And so the Lord Jesus says, when you invite somebody, you go out there, and what do you want? You want them to invite you back? Okay. That's one way to do it. You've got your reward, you've got your pay. But if you invite the person who cannot invite you back, then there is an imbalance of justice. You have given and have not received in return. God is a God of justice. He's got to level this balance again. Therefore, you will be repaid by God. Now who do you want to repay you? There's a brother or sister in great need, no money. "Why should I give my money to this brother or sister? He's got his own father, or she's got her own father and mother. He can look after her. She's got her own relatives and brothers. None of my business." Well, you can think that way, yes. The other thing to think is this: this brother and sister is in need, and I'm going to help this brother and sister. That's going to put me out of pocket. But God knows, and I'm going to get my reward back from him. Okay, it doesn't matter. We saw last week that nobody gives in this way to God's work unless that person sees that they are looking for the return that comes from God, not from man. Therefore, this kind of giving is a concrete expression of faith. But how hard it is to do, isn't it? I mean, we don't want to have beggars crawling into our house and messing up our nice carpet and our nice sofa. I mean, just think how much it costs to clean the place after they have gone, never mind the banquet itself. And just think what the neighbors will think with all those messy people, all crummy and scruffy, coming into our house. The Lord says, well, it depends how you think, from whom you seek that reward.
And so there come the clinching words in the last part of verse 14: "You will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous." Now, here is something very important to grasp. It is the resurrection of the righteous the Lord is talking about. If you want to rise again to life, to resurrection, you've got to be found among the righteous, and let nobody tell you anything different. The resurrection to this messianic feast, to this time of blessing — the resurrection is for the righteous. That's the Lord's words, not my words. You have no share in this resurrection unless you are among the righteous.
Now, there is a dangerous trend of teaching today which disregards the necessity for an actual righteousness. Very, very dangerous teaching, that is. And that is not scriptural teaching. We talk about a legal righteousness which is given to us, or imputed to us, on no other basis than a profession of faith. And so that when you profess Christ, you become righteous, even though there is no concrete change in your life. This kind of teaching is a disaster for a church. It will produce a church full of precisely the people that the world calls religious hypocrites. People who have not really changed, who have not become new creatures, who simply make a profession of faith and are told that they now have a righteousness imputed to them, namely Christ's righteousness.
Now, those of you who have been studying Romans in our training program, as I said two weeks ago, will see that the central theme of Romans, the key word, is "righteousness" in Romans, and that there were five different Greek words used for righteousness there. You see, Paul never thinks of salvation apart from righteousness. In fact, the word "salvation" is surprisingly scarce in Paul. You need only look up a concordance to discover the word "salvation" is rather scarce in Paul, but "righteousness" is very frequent in Paul. And compared to some words — in fact, I checked it again just yesterday in the statistics — I found that the word "salvation," for example, occurs some 26 times in Paul, whereas the word "body" occurs 91 times. Strange, isn't it? That shows you how out of proportion it is. Can you remember where Paul speaks about a body? Only a few times here and there, but he uses the word 91 times. The word "salvation" he uses only about a quarter of that. The word "Savior" also only two or three times. Very few times he uses the word "Savior." But why is this so? Because for him there is no discussion about salvation except to talk about righteousness.
But if you look at words like holiness, righteousness, and so on, then they abound. But you see, in the church today, the emphasis has turned the other way around. We constantly talk about salvation and scarcely about righteousness. Righteousness has faded out for some reason. We have turned the balance completely the other way around. We have put the emphasis in the wrong place in scripture.
"The resurrection of the righteous." The resurrection is for the righteous. Of course, there are two kinds of resurrection in the Bible. The resurrection of the righteous unto salvation. The resurrection of the unrighteous, the sinners, unto condemnation. Now, if you are in that resurrection, you only rise for condemnation. But here, the Lord Jesus is talking about the resurrection of the righteous. And when he speaks of righteousness, he is not speaking about some legal righteousness. He is speaking about the practical righteousness that he himself here defines. And this righteousness has to do with the giving to the poor and seeking nothing in return. This is not a salvation by good works. This is a salvation by transformation, by the transformation of your whole way of thinking. That is the salvation that the Lord Jesus talks about. We cannot be saved by good works. These are not the kind of works you can do by nature. This is not the kind of works that a natural man would do. It is contrary to our nature to give without expecting anything material or concrete in return. We only will do such things if our thinking has been changed. We become new creatures, in terms of Romans 12, verses 1 and 2.
Now I hope you understand that the Lord Jesus speaks about a very concrete righteousness. Now this is not to say that there is not a righteousness that comes from forgiveness. First of all, we must be forgiven. And this section the Lord Jesus already speaks about earlier on in this chapter from verses 7 to 11. There he speaks about forgiveness. But we find here in this section that he is speaking about the concern that once we are forgiven, we have a real righteousness, a real change in our attitude, in our way of thinking. What is this change in thinking? Well, nobody does the kind of thing that the Lord Jesus speaks about here, and you need only try to do it to see how true these words are. You try sometimes to go out on the street and invite the poor, the maimed, the blind, or give to some brother or sister in the church who is in need, and see how you feel. Immediately you feel, "Why am I doing this? This is not my responsibility." Immediately your whole being protests against it because you know that you are getting no material advantage out of this. And we are trained to get advantage out of what we do. That's what our whole education was for — to get us some place in this world, to be wise in this world, to give us a place in our society. And to do things in this way to end up poor — now that's exactly what we are talking about. Nobody who has not turned his back upon the world and disregarded the worldly logic of things would do things like this, to invite the poor.
So here we come to a definition of righteous in the Lord's teaching. The first definition of righteous in the Lord's teaching is a person who has turned his back upon the world because his whole thinking has been transformed. He has a new set of values, and at the center of that new set of values is God. And because his thinking has been changed, he does not live for this present world, this present life, but he lives for the world to come, for the age to come. The new person, the new man in Christ, has seen that this world is transitory, it is passing away. There's no use hanging on to that which is going away. I often think of this world like taking a handful of sand. The tighter you squeeze the sand, the faster it goes out between your fingers. Have you ever tried to take hold of a handful of sand? Next time you're at the beach, try it. Take hold of a handful of dry sand and hold it, and try to hold it as tight as you can so as not to lose it. And you'll discover that the tighter you hold it, the quicker it goes out of your fingers.
The new man has come to see that there is no point holding on to this world. As Paul says, we come into this world with nothing, and we will go out of this world with nothing. And all that you have labored for in between, you won't take with you at all. Neither your reputation, nor your degrees, nor your money — nothing goes with you. Everything stays behind. The new man has come to see that it is the life to come that matters. Because there's nothing you can hold on to in this life. But that life which is to come, that is to which we journey. That is the life that we must strive for. That is the life that we must learn to value.
So the first thing about righteousness in the Lord's definition — what is a righteous man? A righteous man is a man who, having turned his back upon the world, has a new sense of value. And because he has a new sense of value, his thinking becomes very revolutionary in this way: that he is prepared to give, not seeking any return now. In fact, he would not want a return now. Because if he got a return now, he would lose the return that comes from God. His thinking is revolutionary in the sense that he looks for everything to come from God. Every reward, every return, every advantage. Or, conversely, he looks for vindication from God, not from man. If he is wronged, he looks for God to vindicate him. If he is giving up in such a way that he gets no return, he looks for the return from God. Is your thinking like this? Is my thinking like this? Has our thinking as Christians really been changed? Is our thinking exciting because it is God-centered? Is it daring in its venturing forth in faith? Because it dares to trust in God.
I always find that it takes a lot of courage to have faith. Abraham went forth not knowing where he went. Now, that takes courage. Nobody who does not have the courage of faith that trusts in God dares to do a thing like this. It is those who venture forth who find that God upholds them and he never fails. But unless you take that step first, you look in vain for the glory of God. As the Lord Jesus says in John chapter 11, "Did I not say to you that if you will believe, you shall see the glory of God?" I have said before many times, the trouble with the churches today is that there is a church full of people who have not seen the glory of God. And they have not seen the glory of God because they have not had the courage of faith to venture out, to trust him to do what needs to be done. I have trusted him many a time and he has never failed. I have been wronged and I have refused to redress the balance. Even though I know that it has been most unfair, it has been wrong, and I could have taken action to set the record straight, but every time I was going to do it, I said no. "Vengeance is mine," says the Lord. "He will repay." I shall not straighten the balance. Let my reward come from him. Let him put the record straight.
But in material things too, I have done the same, and he has never failed. I ventured forth from the Far East to Europe with next to no money, as some of you know, trusting in God because he said "Go," I went. And how faithful he has proved. Through long years of study, he provided every need. I staked my life upon him, and he did not fail. Had he failed, I would have ended up in a gutter in England. But he did not fail. I looked to him and saw his glory. "Did I not say to you that if you will believe, you shall see the glory of God?" Oh, that there would be a church that has seen his glory. Then it would not be so hard to be righteous by his grace.
So let us conclude on this first point. The first point — and there are only two points here. The first point is: the righteous are those whose thinking is God-centered, who trust God to set the balance right. And because they seek their reward from God, they want to give to people, to brothers and sisters, maybe to non-Christians — it doesn't matter — looking for nothing in return. Incidentally, you may say this is very impractical economically. Plain enough. It is remarkable how well it works in practice. Any society that actually functioned on this principle would have no needs whatever. There would be no poor. But even in a society that doesn't function on this principle, those who trust in him have never been found to be in want. It is remarkable. Even your material needs, God will see to it. As the psalmist says, "I have seen the young lion hunger" — even the lion will go hungry — "but I have never seen the righteous go hungry." Such is the faithfulness of God. If God cannot be trusted for this life, why bother to trust him for the life to come?
I think that sometimes the non-Christians say with some justification that Christians are hypocrites. I think so. Because if God were what they professed him to be, they should have lived a very different type of life. I never forget the words of Bertrand Russell, who was reported as saying, "If the Christians really believed in the God they professed to believe, I think their life would be very different from what I observe it to be." I think he's right. If you believed in a God who raised the dead, if you believe in a God who will raise the righteous up to take part in the feast, the celebration of salvation — what kind of a God is this that you have believed in? This is a God of glory, of majesty, of holiness, of justice. Such a God is worthy of total trust. Let us live like people who trust him. Let the world see that we trust him, who claim to be righteous. And so righteousness then is a turning of our back upon the world because we turn utterly to God. We trust utterly in him. We do not trust both the world and God. We do not trust both money and God, like some Christians try to do and end up being the hypocrites they are described as. You either trust God or you trust the world. If you trust God, let him be the one from whom you seek reward.
Now the second part of this parable, of this definition of righteousness, is found in this parable. And this parable beautifully sets forth the whole case. First we see then here that the Lord Jesus describes in this parable a man who invited various people to a feast. But these people made excuses. They didn't want to come. And so eventually he goes out and invites the poor, the blind, and the maimed. In other words, this parable is simply applying what the Lord Jesus has just now said to the Pharisee. He says, "When you invite people, don't invite the well-to-do people, but invite the poor." And he goes on to say, now that is exactly what God does. God invites the poor.
Now this parable is beautiful. It is beautifully constructed. And it seems to be patterned on a parable that we find in the Palestinian Talmud. And if the story in the Palestinian Talmud, written in Aramaic, is from the time of the Lord Jesus or before — and the Palestinian Talmud contains very ancient material — then the story that the Lord Jesus tells here in the parable is a story that is actually based on real life.
Now from the Palestinian Talmud, we know a real-life story that goes like this. There was a certain man called Bar-Mayan. "Bar" is the Aramaic for "son," of course, the son of Mayan. Now Bar-Mayan was a tax collector who was very rich. And you know that tax collectors in Bible times were greatly hated because they collected taxes for the Romans. Now there were some quite good people among them, but on the whole they were very much hated because they were regarded as disloyal to Israel. And so this rich tax collector one day — and this is a true-life incident — he invited the counselors of his city to come to a banquet. And Bar-Mayan invited these counselors to his banquet because he hoped to build a good relationship with them. He hoped that they would understand him, why he did what he did, and receive him as a friend. He didn't want to be always having this feeling of antagonism; he wanted to have some feeling of reconciliation.
But the city counselors ignored him because he was a tax collector. They despised him and they rejected his invitation. But because he was a man of some status, because he was a man of wealth, they had to reject his invitation with a certain degree of courtesy, but still they refused to come. Bar-Mayan, being very upset and angry about this, did not want to waste the food, because in fact the feast was already ready. Apparently when he first invited them, they had not given a direct answer, yes or no; they just stalled on this thing. But when the time came, they all with one accord refused to turn up for the feast. Now the food was ready, and Bar-Mayan was not going to waste his food, so he did exactly what happened in this parable. He ordered his servants to go out and bring in all the poor people of the city — the beggars, the blind, the lame — and he invited them all into his house to eat up the food that had been prepared, which the counselors refused to partake of.
So you see that there is a real-life background to this parable, and it may be, as I say, that from the Palestinian Talmud, this account, this incident, may date from the time of the Lord Jesus or before. If so, this parable would have a very familiar ring to the ears of these people.
# The Parable of the Great Banquet (Part 2)
The second one says, "I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them." Apparently the field cannot be looked at the next day. Apparently the oxen cannot be examined the next day. It all has to be done on the very day of the feast. The third one declares, "I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come." Well, he cannot bear to be parted from his wife for so much as a couple of hours to appear at the supper. No, no. "I have married a wife," so he can't come.
Now let's examine the character and the nature of these excuses. But there is one thing in common in all these excuses. There is no sense of need. There is no sense of need for salvation. Today, many times when you speak to people, the most unreachable people, the people that you cannot help, are the people who have no sense of their needs. A doctor cannot help a patient who does not think he is sick, even if he is sick. He has no sense of need. What shall you do? Will you drag him fighting and kicking into the surgery? No. He has no sense of need. "I am okay." A person may be dying of cancer, but he does not feel anything. The cancer cells are spreading through his body, but he doesn't feel anything. Therefore, he has no sense of need. By the time he has the sense of need, it is often too late to do anything about it.
And so in the case of these three people, there is one thing in common, though the excuses are different. There is no sense of need. No sense of spiritual need. Why? Because their concern is with material things. And this is the point that the Lord Jesus wants to bring up. The first one is preoccupied with his field that he has bought. The field here, in the Lord's teaching, represents material possessions. Real estate. Land is the basic type of possession on which you can build a house, you can have a field or whatever. It is real estate. Even today's investors find land is the real concrete place to put your investment. You put your investment in gold, it may go up, it may go down. You may put your investment in stocks and shares, and the stock market may collapse on you. But you put your investment in land, and that is one of the safest forms of investment. It is the basic form of property.
And so here we find that land represents worldly possessions in its basic form. The second person buys five yoke of oxen. Oxen are the basic means of production. It represents, for example, a farmer who buys himself five tractors. Because oxen were the things that you used to work the field. There's no use having a field if you cannot have any production unless you've got something to plow those fields with. So the oxen represent the means of production. They represent the means of earning income. They represent business. And so we can find that the first one then clings to property. The second one clings to his business. And the third one clings to marriage.
Marriage is the thing in which so many people look forward to. They work, they earn, they save up money. Why? In order to have a marriage, to have a wedding, to marry some wife so that they can have children, so that they can settle down in life. Now there's nothing wrong with settling down in life. There is no crime in having some means of production, of owning a business or something like this. What goes wrong is when these things become so important to us that we ignore God's feast of salvation. This is the point here. It is not a condemnation of marriage. It is a condemnation of putting marriage as an excuse for not receiving the salvation of God. It is not condemning the fact that you can have a piece of property. But it is when that property becomes the excuse for not going into God's salvation.
Now these people use these things as an excuse for not receiving salvation. The excuse is a solid one. It is the fact that they become preoccupied with these things. These things absorb their attention. You see, this shows people who have not turned their back upon the world. We saw that the first definition of the righteous is a person who has turned his back upon the world. These are people who are so occupied with the things of this world that they have turned their back upon the feast of salvation, upon God's banquet of salvation. That's a very tragic thing.
Now I have seen this thing happen in very real life. Every parable of the Lord Jesus is very practical and it concerns a real situation in life. Take for example young people in their student days. I have seen them how full of zeal they are for the Lord. Oh, they are so busy for God. They spend so much time for God. They are busy doing this and busy doing that for God. And then they graduate. And then they acquire a piece of property. They buy themselves a house. And then they buy themselves a car. And they marry a wife. And proportionately their zeal goes down and down and down and down. Gradually they turn their backs upon salvation. They cool off. They say they "become more mature." In fact, all that has happened is they have become more wealthy. That's all that has happened. I can think back in my student days of so many people who were so busy for God, so zealous for God. Today they are lawyers. They are big businessmen. They are doctors. They are people who have position in this world. And correspondingly to that position in the world that they now have, spiritually they have become lukewarm. And some of them have gone completely away. They have no time now for the banquet of salvation. "People are okay," they say, "but they have no time for this." They are more occupied with their land, with their oxen, with their wives. That is very true to life.
But so what happens here? As we have said then, the Lord goes out and instead of these people who have refused, who have rejected this salvation — what shall God do then? He goes out and he brings in the poor, the blind, the maimed. The kind of people who are not worthy. Now that takes me to the second point of the definition of righteousness. The definition of righteousness of the Lord Jesus here is a definition of worthiness. That is to say, a righteous person is the kind of person who sees himself as being unworthy.
You see, the higher up you come in the world, the more worthy you feel yourself to be. Let me tell you, beware of that deception. Right now you may be a student. You are an undergraduate. You are nothing much in this world. Just an undergraduate. No degree, nothing much. One of these days you graduate and you collect a degree, and suddenly you feel you have become somebody. Now you have become worthy. You can put on an academic gown and a hood and some funny-looking hat on your head. Suddenly you have become worthy of putting all this stuff on. Suddenly you have got a piece of paper in your hand, rather nicely drawn off and printed, that you can put on a frame somewhere. You see, that suddenly has made you worthy. Let me tell you something. The moment you start feeling yourself to be worthy, you are in trouble as far as God is concerned.
You see, these people, because they had a field, because they have oxen — and five yoke of oxen, that's a lot of oxen to have — or because they have a wife, suddenly they have become somebody. Have you ever had that sense when you just got married? Being recently married, suddenly you have acquired new status. You belong to the senior generation. You've graduated. You have arrived. And all those young people down there need to look up to the senior people up here. The married ones. The social people. Now you have to rightly address "Mr. So-and-so," and before you were only "Miss," but now suddenly you are "Mrs." Even two syllables. "Miss" is only one syllable. "Mrs." — two syllables. You have really improved. You have really come along. So suddenly you have attained a higher position. Now that's very dangerous. Very dangerous. That is part of the disease.
If you want to be righteous from God's eyes, the way to go up is to go down. Recognize yourself as God sees you. The reason why you think of yourself as worthy is because you now see yourself as other people see you. You see yourself in the eyes of the world. How many people are university graduates? Well, not very many. And I am one of them. And how many people have master's degrees? Not very many. But I am even more than those graduates. And how many people have PhDs? Even fewer. I belong to the cream of the elite. I, your humble sir, PhD. Now there's nothing wrong with PhDs. There's nothing wrong with master's degrees. I come from a family with lots of PhDs. But the point simply is this: it is when these things make you feel yourself to be worthy, that God is honored to have the likes of you, that you no longer qualify as the righteous in God's eyes. God abides with those who are of a humble and a contrite spirit. The moment we think ourselves to be something, we become nothing in God's eyes. I hope that you understand this thing. The moment we think that we have arrived, that is precisely when we have not arrived spiritually, because now instead of thinking as God sees us, we are thinking as how other people see us. Because men honor us, we think ourselves to be honored. We think ourselves to be something.
So there are three categories in this parable. The first category is the category of those people who made excuses. And notice that there is only one implication in their excuse: that their own business is more important than the host who invited them. Now if they regarded the host as more important than their business, of course, if the host invites them, they will come right away. "If you invite me, I'll come. Never mind all this business. I can look at my field tomorrow or the day after or next week. What does that matter? You invited me, I'll come." But no. They don't regard the host as worthy of them. The host is not worthy of me. I am the one that, if I came, I would give honor and glory to the host if I choose to come.
There are people who think that God is honored because they are a Christian. They, the mighty, are a Christian. How honored God is to have the likes of you in the church. Alas, have you any concept of God's glory? Do you think that your presence in the church of God adds one whit to his glory? What kind of a God do you worship? The creator of heaven and earth. Is he glorified because I happen to be in his church? Because I am a pastor of his church, that he is glorified? He is honored with me being around? No, God is not so small. If you have some concept of God's glory and greatness, who am I that I should be proud of being a Christian? But you see, these people regarded the host as not worthy of having them in the kingdom. This is what happens. Many times you invite people to come to the feast of salvation, invite them to the church — "I have no time." You have no time? Wait till God has no time for you. Then you are really in trouble.
And the second kind of person is the kind of person that God invites precisely because of their utter sense of unworthiness. The blind, the maimed — these are people who have no sense of their worthiness. They don't think themselves to be anybody. When they are invited, they don't make excuses. They come. "Wow, if he invites me? Really, he invites me? Me?" Now these are people who never think they are too good to be invited. They are the people who realize that they are not good enough.
And you notice there is a progression of thought in this parable. The third category of people feel themselves so unworthy to come that it says here in verse 23, they need to be compelled to come. They need to be constrained. And so the master said to the servant, "Go out to the highways and hedges and compel the people to come." This relates to the third category of people. You see, there comes a group of people who feel themselves so unworthy of God's grace and mercy that if you say, "Come, because God receives you," they say, "No, I am not good enough. I am such a bad, such a rotten sinner that God would never receive me." And you need to constrain them. You need to take them gently but firmly by the hands and lead them to God's kingdom. You must constrain them. Say, "Please, you must come, because you must believe that though you are not worthy, God receives you."
And so this definition of worthiness that the Lord gives us in this second point is simply this: the more unworthy you see yourself to be, the more worthy you really are in God's sight. The most unworthy person is a person who regards himself as worthy. And the most worthy person in God's sight is the person who knows himself to be unworthy. Now this is not coming from any false humility. It is simply learning to see ourselves as we really are. God is not impressed with what money you have got. Do you think he's impressed with that? People are impressed, but God is not people. He's not impressed with that. Do you think he's impressed with your academic attainment? People are impressed. Yes, they are. But what's that to God? God looks at you in your heart at what you really are. That's what he looks at. He doesn't look at your diplomas. He looks into your heart and sees what you really are. And you know what you really are — not what other people see you to be, but what you really are in yourself. Your weakness, your inadequacy, your selfishness. Those things are really there. Those are the things you need to look at, because that's what God looks at.
And so we need to conclude in today's message simply on these points. To sum up then, there is nothing more blessed than to be invited, as God has invited us, to the feast of salvation. There is nothing more important, no greater joy. As this person in verse 15 says, "Blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God." Happy is the man who has a place in God's kingdom. But who is going to have a place in God's kingdom? It is those people just mentioned in verse 14: those who have a place in the resurrection of the righteous, the resurrection of the just.
But who are the righteous? The righteous are the poor in spirit, as we read in Matthew chapter 5, verse 3. It is the poor in spirit who shall inherit the kingdom of God. It is the poor in spirit who will have a place at the feast, the banquet of salvation. Yes. But what does "poor in spirit" mean? Well, it means these two points concerning righteousness. The poor in spirit are the people who have turned their backs upon the world because they have now a new standard of thinking, a new way of thinking. The poor in spirit are the people who have said goodbye to the world and said yes to God. For them, God is the center of their thinking. They seek their reward from God, not from men. They live with God in view. Whatever they do, they don't want to look for the praise from men. Or, if they have been wronged by men, they don't seek justification from men. They seek justification from God. Their eyes, in everything, are upon God. The poor in spirit, because they have said goodbye to the world, must be poor, because they don't have the world anymore. But they have God instead.
And secondly, they are the people who have a deep sense of unworthiness. The poor in spirit are the people who are contrite of heart, who always know themselves to be unworthy of the least of God's mercy. The great apostle Paul sets an example of this very thing. You have never seen a man who felt himself more unworthy than Paul. You need read only 1 Timothy chapter 1 and verse 15, where he said that he received mercy because — and that he is the chief of sinners, the foremost of sinners, because he persecuted the church of God. He said, "If you think you are a sinner, I tell you something, I am worse. I have done worse things than you have." In 1 Corinthians chapter 15 and verse 9 he says, "I am the least of the apostles, and indeed I am not fit to be an apostle. I am not fit to be an apostle because I persecuted God's church." He would not forgive himself, even though God had forgiven him. That is to say, he would not forget about it. He would always let this thing keep him humble. Always remember that he is unworthy. The most worthy person is the person who knows himself to be unworthy.
In Matthew chapter 8, verse 8, the centurion said to the Lord Jesus, "I am not worthy to have you come to my house. I am not worthy to have you in my house." How different is his attitude from these people who, being invited to God's house, refused to come. He did not feel worthy to have God in his house, to have the Lord Jesus in his house. Yet he was a centurion. A centurion is a high-ranking officer. He could have said, "I am a centurion, far above these common herds there." The centurion even had access to the presence of the emperor. He was a high-ranking officer. And centurions usually were of high birth; they came from noble families. Some of them fought their way up the ranks. Others had this rank because of their noble birth. But not so. He did not think of himself because he was a centurion. He said to the Lord Jesus, "I am not worthy to have you in my house." And yet he proved to be the most worthy of all the people in the Gospels. The Lord Jesus said, "Such faith I have not seen anywhere in Israel."
Let us then pray that God will show us what we really are, that we may know what it is to be righteous, and that we may find by his grace a place at the feast of salvation. Let us be quiet before God in prayer.