Luke 14
Butler1. AND it came to pass, as he went into the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat
2 bread on the sabbath-day, that they watched him. And behold, there was a certain man
3 before him which had the dropsy. And Jesus answering, spake unto the lawyers and
4. Pharisees, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath-day? And they held their peace.
5. And he took him, and healed him, and let him go: and answered them, saying, Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out
6 on the sabbath-day? And they could not answer him again to these things.
7. And he put forth a parable to those which were bidden, when he marked how they
8 chose out the chief rooms; saying unto them, When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room, lest a more honourable man than thou be
9 bidden of him; and he that bade thee and him come and say to thee, Give this man
10 place; and thou begin with shame to take the lowest room. But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room; that when he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go up higher: then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them
11 that sit at meat with thee. For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.
12. Then said he also to him that bade him, When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbours; lest
13 they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. But when thou makest a 14 feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind: and thou shalt be blessed: for they cannot recompense thee: for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.
WE behold him in every conceivable variety of positions, mingling with all sorts of persons, and with all kinds of events; we follow the steps of his public life, and we watch his most unsuspecting and retired moments; we see him in the midst of thousands, or with his disciples, or with a single individual; we see him in the capital of his country, or in one of its remote villages, in the temple and the synagogue, or in the desert, or in the streets; we see him with the rich and with the poor, the prosperous and the afflicted, the good and the bad, with his private friends and with his enemies and murderers; and we behold him at last in circumstances the most overwhelming which it is possible to conceive, deserted, betrayed, falsely accused, unrighteously condemned, nailed to a cross! But wherever he is, and however placed, in the ordinary circumstances of his daily life, or at the last supper, or in Gethsemane, or in the judgment hall, or on Calvary, he is the same meek, pure, wise, godlike Being. Y.
1. No cooking was done (Exod. 16: 23); but, as those feasts must have necessitated more or less labor, the fact shows how little real earnestness there was in the Jewish Sabbatarianism; how fast and loose they could play with their own convictions; how physical self-indulgence and unintelligent routine had usurped the place of spiritual enlightenment. On the contrary, there was no inconsistency whatever in our Lord’s accepting such invitations; there was nothing wrong in them, and nothing out of accordance with true principles; and therefore Jesus could sanction them with his presence. But had there been any true principle involved in the Jewish view, they ought to have thought them wrong.
3. The Sabbath was a Mosaic, nay, even a primeval institution, and it had become the most distinctive and the most passionately reverenced of all the ordinances which separated the Jew from the Gentile as a peculiar people. It was at once the sign of their exclusive privileges, and the centre of their barren formalism. Their traditions, their patriotism, even their obstinacy, were all enlisted in its scrupulous maintenance. Its observance had been fenced round by the minutest, the most painfully precise, the most ludicrously insignificant restrictions. Here was one claiming to be a prophet, yea, and more than a prophet, deliberately setting aside, as it seemed to them, the traditional sanctity of that day of days! An attentive reader of the gospels will be surprised to find how large a portion of the enmity and opposition which our Lord excited, not only in Jerusalem, but even in Galilee and in Perea, turned upon this point alone. F.—In all these cases, it is plain that the Jews, by the corrupt glosses of their tradition, had loaded the Sabbath with burdens not imposed by the spirit of the fourth commandment; and that Christ was authoritatively taking these burdens off, and showing the true meaning of that precept. Stone.—The Jews had turned the blessing of the Sabbath into a curse. From the moment of hearing the ram’s horn, a sacred trumpet, called the shofa, blown from the temple wall, announcing that the Sabbath had commenced, he was not allowed to light a fire or make a bed, to boil a pot; he could not pull his ass from a ditch, nor raise an arm in defence of his life. A Jew could not quit his camp, his village, or his city on the day of rest. He might not begin a journey; if going along a road, he must rest from sundown till the same event of the coming day. He might not carry a pencil, a kerchief, a shekel in his belt; if he required a handkerchief for use, he had to tie it round his leg. If he offended against one of these rules, he was held to deserve the doom awarded to the vilest of sinners. Some rabbins held that a man ought not to change his position, but that whether he was standing or sitting when the shofa sounded, he should stand or sit immovable as a stone until the Sabbath had passed away. W. H. D.
4-6. They held their peace. They would not say “Yes;” but, on the other hand, they dared not say “No!” Had it been unlawful, it was their positive function and duty to say so then and there, and without any subterfuge to deprive the poor sufferer, so far as in them lay, of the miraculous mercy which was prepared for him, and to brave the consequences. Their silence was his entire justification. They could not answer. They knew that they could only admit the fact, and then the argument was irresistible; a man was more important than a beast; the extrication of a beast involved more labor by far than the healing of a man. Their base little plot only ended in the constrained and awkward silence of a complete refutation which they were too ungenerous to acknowledge. The dropsy of their inflated self-satisfaction was a disease far more difficult to heal than that of the sufferer whom they had used to entrap him. F.—As on other occasions, the Lord brings back those present to their own experience, and lets them feel the keen contradiction in which their blame of Christ’s free work of love sets them with themselves, in that, where their worldly interests were at hazard, they did that very thing whereof they made now an occasion against him. T.
12-14. This parable is only a continuation of the foregoing. As the guests ought to humble themselves by taking the lowest place, so should the host humble himself by inviting the poorest. He should exercise condescending, humble love. O.
—Call not thy friends, but call the poor. This language does not forbid hospitality, nor the entertaining of friends. His own practice shows that it does not. He means to say, If you wish recompense, as you Pharisees do (for you give dinners that you may gain power and advance yourselves in the synagogue and temple), call the poor, etc. Entertain your friends; but, still more, feed the hungry, and relieve those who are in distress. J. C.
Section 103.—The Great Supper. Counting the Cost.
15. And when one of them that sat at meat with him heard these things, he said unto him, Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God. 16, 17 Then said he unto him, A certain man made a great supper, and bade many: and sent his servant at supper-time to say to them that were bidden, Come, for all things are now 18 ready. And they all with one consent began to make excuse. The first said unto him, I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go and see it: I pray thee have me 19 excused. And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them: 20 I pray thee have me excused. And another said, I have married a wife: and therefore 21 I cannot come. So that servant came, and showed his lord these things. Then the master of the house being angry, said to his servant, 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 22 blind. And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is 23 room. And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and 24 compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. For I say unto you, That none of those men which were bidden, shall taste of my supper. 25, 26 And there went great multitudes with him: and he turned, and said unto them, If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. 28 For which of you intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the 29 cost, whether he hath sufficient to finish it? Lest haply after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish. 31 Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him 32 with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an 33 ambassade, and desireth conditions of peace. So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple. 34, 35 Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be seasoned? It is neither fit for the land, nor yet for the dunghill; but men cast it out. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.
THE unparalleled boldness of Christ’s teaching, the tremendous claims which he makes on those who offer to join themselves to him, may well fill us with marvel and with awe. How intolerable the pride and presumption of any less than the greatest, lower than the highest, to impose the conditions of discipleship which he here imposes, to demand of men the sacrifices which he here demands; and this, be it observed, not in the name of One whose messenger he is, but in his own; standing forth as himself the object, to whom all this measureless devotion of all men is justly due; who, claiming it all, claims nothing but his own! What man, that was not man’s maker as well as his fellow, could have required that father and mother, wife and children, should all be postponed to him; that, where any competition between his claims and theirs arose, he should be everything and they nothing; that not merely these, which, though very close to a man, are yet external to him, but that his very self, his own life, should be hated, when on no other conditions Christ could be loved? How could this be, except as he also stood in the place of God and was God? T.
15. According to the notions then current among the Jews, the open setting up of the kingdom of God would be ushered in by a great and glorious festival, of which all the members of that kingdom should be partakers. This man spoke these words with a comfortable assurance that he should make one of those that should thus eat bread in the kingdom of God. He, as a Jew, a member of the elect nation, had been invited to that great feast of God. He had not at all considered whether in the refusal to enter into that higher spiritual life of the gospel, to which Christ was now inviting him, there was not involved his own ultimate rejection from the heavenly festival. For his warning, and for the warning of all like-minded with him, the parable was spoken.
18 21. In what remarkable connection do the words, put into the mouth of the guests, stand with the declaration of the Saviour which presently after follows, “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple;” and how apt a commentary on the parable is supplied by the words of Paul, “This I say, brethren, the time is short; it remaineth that both they that have wives be as though they had none, and they that weep as though they wept not, and they that rejoice as though they rejoiced not, and they that buy as though they possessed not, and they that use this world as not abusing it;” since it was not the having—for they had nothing which it was not lawful for men to have—but the unduly loving these things, which proved their hinderance, and ultimately excluded them from the feast. . . . None of the guests are kept away by any occupation in itself sinful—and yet all become sinful, because they are allowed to interfere with higher objects. T.—Each excuse differs from the other, and each has its own plausibility, but all come to the same result: “We have other things to attend to, more pressing just now.” Nobody is represented as saying, I will not come; nay, all the answers imply that but for certain things they would come, and when these are out of the way they will come. So it certainly is in the case intended, for the last words clearly imply that the refusers will one day become petitioners. B.
17. These customs remain unchanged. The message, “Come, for the supper is ready,” may be heard to this day; and to refuse is a high insult. F.
—18. They all began to make excuse. This always was and still is the practice of the world. Though men be invited to the greatest feast that heaven can afford, they slight it on some pretence or other. These have their ambition, those their covetousness, a third sort their revenge, a fourth their luxury, to gratify and indulge. They have the cares of this life upon their hands, and in their hearts too; with which they are so occupied, that there is no room left for the thoughts of another life to come. Beveridge.
23. Compel them to come in. Invite them, entreat them, be importunate to them. The “compelling” here spoken of was an act of kindness, not of rigor, toward those who had no reason to expect so great a favor from the lord. Jortin. —The words imply, not any reluctance to accept the invitation, but rather that these houseless dwellers in the highways would hold themselves so unworthy of the invitation as scarcely to be induced—without earnest persuasion—to enter the rich man’s dwelling, and share in his magnificent entertainment. And when we pass on to the spiritual thing signified, what can this compelling men to come in mean, save that strong, earnest exhortation, which the ambassadors of Christ will address to men, when they are themselves deeply convinced of the mighty issues which there are for every man, linked with his acceptance or rejection of the gospel? They will speak as delivering the words of him who has a right to be heard by his creatures—who not merely entreats, but commands all men everywhere, to repent and believe the gospel. T.
24. I say unto you. The words of Christ to those around the table, and the key to the parable. Thus it appears that he is “the man that made a great supper.” He was there an invited guest, and he tells those before him that he also has made a great supper and has bidden many—and he puts it to their hearts whether they as cordially attended to his invitation as they had accepted that of their host. The invitation was first given by John the Baptist to the Pharisees and rulers. These all with one consent began to make excuse; i. e., the exceptions are so few that they are thus correctly described as a class. The second sending forth of the servant refers to the commission given to the apostles of Christ to invite Jewish “sinners and publicans” to the feast. The third message was sent to the heathen, or Gentiles. The feast is salvation, with its untold blessings. D. K. D.—The application to all present was obvious. The worldly heart—whether absorbed in the management of property, or the acquisition of riches, or the mere sensualisms of contented comfort—was incompatible with any desire for the true banquet of the kingdom of heaven. The Gentile and the Pariah, the harlot and the publican, the laborer of the roadside and the beggar of the streets, these might be there in greater multitudes than the scribe with his boasted learning, and the Pharisee with his broad phylactery. “For I say unto you,” he added, to point the moral immediately to their own hearts, “that none of those men who were called shall taste of my supper.” It was the lesson which he so often pointed. “To be invited is one thing, to accept the invitation is another.” F.
26. Hate not his father, etc. Matthew (10 : 37) expresses the true meaning, “Loveth father or mother more than me.” Pearce.—Our Saviour’s meaning is to be extended no further than to a readiness and willingness, whenever God shall call us to it, to quit all our temporal interests and enjoyments, and even life itself, the dearest of all other things to us, and to submit to any temporal inconvenience and suffering for his sake. Tillotson.—The “hate” is adopted in strict accordance with our Lord’s habit of stating the great truths which he uttered in the extremest form of what, to his hearers, must even sound like paradox, in order that their inmost essential truth might be recognized, and so fixed eternally in their memory. It was necessary that they should be uttered in such a way as to seize and dominate over the imagination of mankind forever. F.—Jesus presents himself to men as one having absolute authority over them. Everything about him breathes this authority. He regards men as belonging to him of absolute right; as having been given him by his Father, that he again might give them eternal life, and reign eternally over them. “Follow me!” he says to Philip, to Levi, to the sons of Zebedee; and these men leave all and follow him. He requires all to consider not only their souls, but their possessions, their entire life, as devoted to him who calls himself their Saviour. Jesus allows no rival; his disciple must subordinate, and if need be, sacrifice to him even this holiest affection. R. C.
28. Intending to build a tower. It is those who, counting up their means, discover that they have not enough to carry through the work, and that of their own they never will have enough, and who therefore renounce all that they have—it is these, and not they who walk in a vain conceit of their own riches, who are able to finish this tower. How it fares with the others, what a swift and shameful coming to the end of all their fancied resources inevitably awaits them, Christ puts vividly before our eyes in the words which follow (verses 29, 30).
32. How profound is the lesson here, when we recognize in this king who might come against us with his twenty thousand, with a might altogether overpowering ours, no other than God himself! He is a fighter against God who would fain be anything in his sight, who, face to face with God, would assert himself at all; who does not renounce all that he hath, and that which is dearest to the natural man, his own righteousness the first of all. Paul would have been such a fighter against God, if, refusing to submit himself to the righteousness of God, he had stood out upon a righteousness of his own. When, with his face to the ground, he asked, “What wilt thou have me to do?” he was exactly falling in with that which Christ here declares to be the only wisdom for every man, demanding conditions of peace from that far mightier King, with whom it is impossible for flesh and blood, for sinful man, to contend.
33. Forsaketh all he hath. In that “forsaketh,” or “renounces,” “bids good-by to,” lies the key to the whole passage. Christ has spoken of the absolute renunciation of all, even of a man’s own life, as the condition without which no man could be his disciple. But this self which needs to be renounced is oftentimes the self of one who proposes to serve God, but to serve him in his own strength, and not in God’s; who may have renounced much, but has not renounced a vain confidence in his own powers, and that these will enable him to carry to a successful end a service thus undertaken. Christ uses these two similitudes, borrowed from two enterprises, the one grave to a private man, the other even to a king; by aid of the first he warns us of the shameful close which may attend a service in this spirit begun; while in the second he points out to all the only wise course for the avoiding of such perils as would thus lie before them. T.—He warned them that all who would be his disciples must come to him, not expecting earthly love or acceptance, but expecting alienation and opposition, and counting the cost. They must abandon, if need be, every earthly tie; they must sit absolutely loose to the interests of the world. They must take up the cross and follow him: strange language, of which it was only afterward that they learnt the full significance. For a man to begin a tower which he could not finish—for a king to enter on a war in which nothing was possible save disaster and defeat
—involved disgrace and indicated folly; better not to follow him at all, unless they followed him prepared to forsake all that they had on earth; prepared to sacrifice the interests of time for those of eternity. F.