Love, Grace and Humility

We are very happy to give someone the mandate to give better education to our teenagers, to fix societal problems regarding alcohol. Yet, what are we doing about it? Perhaps some of you rile up at this lagging phenomenon: the attitude of being lazy and yet being outraged at the same time. But maybe the more uncomfortable question this morning is, how do we view ourselves in terms of entitlement?

Do you perceive a sense of self-entitlement in yourself? I want us to have a look this morning at Luke 14, that I believe explores this topic a little bit. And it's a classic Jesus moment in Luke 14: a classic duel again between Him and His nemeses at that time, the Pharisees. Luke 14, verses one through 14. Luke 14, verse one.

One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, He was being carefully watched. There in front of Him was a man suffering from dropsy. Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in the law, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?" But they remained silent. So taking hold of the man, Jesus healed him and sent him away.

Then He asked them, "If one of you has a son or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull him out?" And they had nothing to say. When He noticed how the guests picked the places of honour at the table, He told them this parable. "When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honour, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, 'Give this man your seat.'

Then humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. But when you are invited, take the lowest place so that when your host comes, He will say to you, 'Friend, move up to a better place.' Then you will be honoured in the presence of all your fellow guests. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." Then Jesus said to the host, "When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbours.

If you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous." So far, our reading this morning. If you have a quick scan of this passage, you see that it is roughly divided into three sections.

Three areas that particularly have a message or an input regarding this idea of self-entitlement. In verses one to six, we see how the grace of God works through love and how it crushes the harshness that comes from this sense of self-entitlement. Luke indicates that Jesus was invited to a prominent Pharisee's house, and at this time, the first verse says that Jesus was being watched. Now we can assume that Jesus wasn't invited because He was a mate of these guys. This was another opportunity for the Pharisees to check out what Jesus was on about.

There was an ulterior motive behind this, Luke indicates. And Jesus, knowing this, Jesus understanding this situation, sees it as an opportunity to test the Pharisees back. And there in the midst of the guests is a man who has what the Bible translates, or the English translation is, dropsy. Now any doctors or health specialists will tell you that it's oedema, which is a bloating or a swelling of fluids in the body. Very painful, but a chronic situation as well.

And so here's this man who is a guest, probably of this prominent Pharisee. We can bet that it is not someone that is a tax collector. It is not someone who is a prostitute. It is not someone that is necessarily poor or lame. It probably is a relative or the friend of a relative or something like that.

Someone close to these prominent Pharisees. But even this is something that is difficult when Jesus asks them, "Will it be okay for this person to be healed on the Sabbath?" And they don't answer Jesus. And Jesus touches the man, grabs him, the Bible says, and he is healed instantly. And then Jesus asked this next logical question.

"If your son, someone you loved, or your ox, something you valued, fell in a well on the Sabbath day, would you not immediately pull him out?" And they again responded with silence. What we see here is the beginning of a teaching that is very poignant. It is a teaching on what the gospel is. Many scholars and commentators that I've read view this as some very practical teaching from Jesus on how we should have our dinner parties and who we should invite and how we should share hospitality.

But I think Jesus is doing something much more significant here. He is teaching something deeply spiritual here. That is why Luke identifies this as a parable: an earthly story with a spiritual meaning. Jesus is visually demonstrating the power of grace. And He begins by teaching His first lesson, and that is that love trumps the law of good works, and it trumps it through something that is called grace.

Jesus heals a sick man, a man who was probably known to these guys, and these guys should have had compassion on him. They should have cared for him. He's not some stranger. He's not some delinquent off the street. He's someone that these people knew.

He may have been that Pharisee's son or brother. Jesus heals the man and then makes us this point: if someone valuable to you is in distress, even on the Sabbath day, would you not do something about it? On the Sabbath day where social and philosophical and legal regulations meant that you had to stay away from physical exertion. Despite that, would you not rescue them?

Now these legal experts, these religious teachers who knew the laws of the Jewish code, understood it really well, had brought Jesus in for some questioning and some investigation. The spotlight has turned back on them. And once again, they are found without words. Because common sense would say, "Of course. Of course, I would rescue my son. I wouldn't wait a day.

Of course, I would save someone in distress. Of course, if my valuable ox, my life savings went down into a well, of course, I would pull it out trying to keep it alive." But they are morally obliged also to stick to the party line that would say, "No, you must not break that command." And so their harshness, the harshness of their hearts is highlighted. But what Jesus does is to make the point that the grace of God, the sheer, free, unconditional goodness of God is able to reach over any impediment.

Why? Because of love. What the Pharisees wrestled with is something that is so common to us all, and that is a self-justifying, self-righteous, self-entitled nature, where we seek to justify ourselves with some set of ideal philosophical formulations. "If I am home in time to say goodnight to my girls before they go to bed, I'm being a good dad. If I show up to church two out of four times, I'm at a pass rate with my conscience.

If I only go this far with my boyfriend physically and no further, I'm still pure." And we make these codes up all the time. And why do we have them? So that we can protect our sense of self-entitlement. The idea that we deserve good things.

The idea that we deserve the goodness of God. You see, self-entitlement makes us harsh. So harsh that it might be justifiable to not help a man suffering from chronic illness because it would be breaking some sort of law, some sort of code that we use to bulk up ourselves in our goodness. What we need to remember and what Jesus was teaching these Pharisees is that in the economy of God, love always trumps dead works. Love always trumps dead works: doing those things for self-justification, doing those things in self-entitlement.

It was love that caused God to give these laws in the first place, which is what they forgot. These laws that are the blueprint of a healthy life. And now Jesus would show that doing something that seemed totally contradictory to these laws is in fact so much in line with the reason these laws were given. It was not contradictory at all. Through the heart of love brought about by grace, Jesus showed that He was able to heal this man and do it because He did it in the right way.

Secondly, in verses seven to eleven, we see how grace trumps self-entitlement through humility. Jesus notices the political and the social wrangling that's going on in this feast, in at this lunch. He notices people clamoring to get closer to seats to Himself as a guest of honour or to the host. And that sort of pricks His, I guess, His imagination a little bit, and He begins telling this parable. And He says that Jesus begins this story, this earthly story, with a spiritual truth or spiritual meaning.

And He said that seeking the highest place of honour may in fact leave you humiliated. If a host of a great wedding banquet asks you to move to the back of the line, you have to stand up in front of everyone and sort of make your way with your head down to the back because everyone else has taken their seats. In that situation, in that context, the social structure of that time, humiliation and embarrassment and shame is a big deal. You would not want that to happen to you. And Jesus says, on the other side, if you were to come in and take your seat very humbly, very lowly, at the end of the line, this host in His grace towards you may say, "Friend, don't sit here.

Move up. Move up further. Here's a special place that I have prepared for you. Come and sit here." And Jesus sums it up and says in verse 11, "For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."

Jesus continues this focus on self-entitlement and says that this sense of expecting God to treat you in a certain way, which is what self-entitlement is, this sense that God needs to treat us in a certain way, expecting others perhaps to treat us in a certain way is futile. It is silly. It is unwise. Self-entitlement makes us proud. Self-entitlement makes us proud.

It makes us expect that our church must do certain things for us, must offer certain things for us. We expect a nice little service. We expect a service with music that's just the right mix of things. Not too loud, not too soft. Not too old, not too new.

We expect the fellowship afterwards to be warm and engaging, but not too clingy. You don't want people hanging off you. At home, it expects that our kids will always be good, that they will always love us back as much as we love them. Expect a good return on our investment. We expect a good return on our investment.

When tragedy then or trial comes, however, I am deeply shocked and very angry that God would allow these things to happen. Why? Because I have an expectation that I deserve good things. I should have nice things and I should have it all the time. But friends, we have to ask ourselves this question: where does this expectation come from?

This sense of self-entitlement. It comes from the understanding that we are righteous enough, that we are good enough to deserve these things. And basically, we live in a system of self-made or work-based religion. "If I have not done anything too horrible, if I have moved into a nice suburb, if I have worked hard enough, if I have just been nice enough, I should be able to expect a return on that. A good return on that investment.

I should get a nice, plush seat at the wedding banquet of life." But we see Jesus teaching that so many of our life's disappointments actually come from unrealistic expectations. So many of our disappointments come from unrealistic expectations. The basis of our disappointment is directly proportional to our unmet expectations. "Why am I so angry at life in this moment?

Because I expected a boyfriend by now. Why am I so disappointed? Because I expected kids by now. I expected my kids to achieve success in life by now. I expected..."

But in the economy of God, grace triumphs or trumps self-entitlement through humility. Jesus says, "When we come to understand the truth of the gospel, which Jesus will go on to explain, when we understand not simply the salvation won by Jesus, but in the same breath how undeserving we are of His love. It rocks us out of the self-entitlement. We cannot help but have our expectations recalibrated when we understand that. In the economy of God, it is only the humble who will be exalted.

In the economy of God, it is only the humble that will be exalted. Why? Because it takes truly humble people to understand that they need a Saviour. It takes truly humble people to realise that they are lost in and of themselves, that they need help from outside of themselves, that they are desperately at sea. Knowing the truth of the gospel changes our day-to-day living.

It means we serve our church. It means rather than expecting others to serve us, we are willing to serve. Understanding the grace of the gospel means we serve those who don't seem to deserve it. And this is what Jesus makes so clear in this next part, in verses 12 to 14, our last point this morning. In verses 12 to 14, we see how humility trumps selfishness through the gospel.

Jesus continues with this parable and teaches that when a lunch or a dinner is made, that the host shouldn't invite his friends or his relatives or even his rich neighbour because they will simply return the favour. Instead, Jesus says, "Go out and find the poor and the lame and the blind and bring them in and serve them this great lunch or this great..." Why? Verse 14 says, "Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous." A third point is that self-entitlement makes us selfish. When we deserve nothing, anything we get is a blessing.

When we expect we deserve something, we think we deserve the best. And anything other than the best deeply disappoints us. And in operating in this economy, you always want a good return on your investment. At least an equal return. If I invite my rich neighbour to a fantastic five-star meal and a good bottle of wine, I would expect at least to have the favour returned, but ideally, I want a six-star meal with a $100 bottle of wine.

I have a Chinese friend who became a Christian, and his family are sort of still in the process, I guess, of becoming Christian. And he tells of this very strict social order of reciprocal favours and gifts and invitations and shouting you a lunch with the expectation that you will do so. And if you don't, man, are you ostracised. What we fail to realise, however, is that Jesus was not simply talking about how to organise a dinner or a lunch. Although it's not less than this either, and it should definitely inform us on how to do this and how to serve practically very graciously.

Jesus is driving home a point about the kingdom of God that He goes on in in verses 15 to 24 to really explain. Jesus is driving home a point about the kingdom of God. The reason we should invest ourselves into things and people which cannot give us an even equal return on our investment, the reason we should do this is because we have been the recipients of unequal investment ourselves. After verse 14, Jesus goes on to talk about the parable of the heavenly banquet, where the host invited all the down and outers to a magnificent feast because his original guests were too busy. His neighbours and his well-to-do relevant relatives could not afford the time to visit.

This is a parable on the kingdom of God. And Jesus goes on to explain that in the economy of God, self-entitlement has no place. Selfishness has no place. Self-righteousness has no place because we were the ones who would never be able to repay the favour of being invited to the feast. Many times Jesus equated heaven and the fully realised final consummation of God's kingdom as a great celebration, a great party, a feast.

And we are the beneficiaries of His unequal investment with unequal returns. And we know so well, don't we? And we sung it again this morning of this investment of the life of His Son Jesus given to us, paid for us for our sin. A king's ransom to buy back a pauper. How dare we be self-entitled?

How dare we shake our fist at God and tell Him how our lives should look? Self-entitlement makes us harsh so that God should act how we expect Him to. Son of God should not heal on the Sabbath day because that is work. Self-entitlement makes us proud. So we expect top spot, good seats, and we are devastated when we are asked to move back to economy class.

Self-entitlement makes us selfish, so we invest into things and expect a good return on them. We lage. We get lazy. We get fat on our own self-righteousness. But in the economy of God, we see how Jesus' love trumps our harshness through grace.

How the grace of Jesus trumps our pride and how His humility trumps our selfishness. Let's not fall into the trap of self-entitlement. It is our greatest flaw at the moment. Let's not fall into this trap of self-entitlement. Let's not be tempted to think that we've made it, that we've arrived, and that somehow we're entitled to the spoils.

No, we're not. We deserve this much. We're not worthy of any of it. We are beggars invited to a feast. And we need to hear this every now and then, don't we?

Because we can easily get entitled. We can easily get self-righteous. We can easily be harsh. Let's pray together this morning. Heavenly Father, we, at one hand, are so struck and so moved by this teaching of Your Son.

On the one hand, we are humbled and moved emotionally and spiritually, Lord, by the understanding that we are these paupers that have received the King's ransom, that we have been invited to a great celebration, a great wedding feast, but we never were the ones who were worthy of going. At the same time, Father, we are convicted and challenged this morning because we have forgotten this. And in our day-to-day life in a world surrounded by self-entitlement, we get lazy and we get fat and we expect and we demand and we are devastated when it doesn't go our way. Father, help us to realise that You are the giver of good things, but You're also the God who gives and takes away. Father, help us to serve rather than the expectation to be served.

Help us to love and not so much demand to be loved in return. Father, for the inadequacies we see around us, give us the guts to do something about it. Father, we thank You for Your grace. We thank You, Lord, that You know us and You know our weaknesses and You know our shortcomings, and yet You love us and You would not turn us away from this great celebration.

Father, help us to be humble. Give us the strength to value You and understand Your grace, and let that permeate in all our actions and thoughts. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.