Whataburger

We're going to look at Luke 14, 1 through 24 today, and that's a lot of verses. So let me just give a little introduction, and then we'll jump on this thing pretty quick and hard. When I said that, let me give a little introduction, Emily laughed back there like, yeah, right, a little introduction. Luke 13, 22, Jesus was passing through from one city and village to another, teaching and proceeding on his way to Jerusalem. When you look at these verses that we'll be looking at, you've got to keep that in mind, that he is on his way to Jerusalem. You can back up all the way to Luke 9, 51, when this begins, where it says, he resolutely set his face to go to Jerusalem. The Galilean ministry is ending.

He's moving into Judea and on to Jerusalem. And there's a real turning point in his ministry. You don't see near as many miracles as you do teaching, because it's important that they begin to grasp and understand what all of his supernatural ministry was about. So making his way to Jerusalem, Jesus has been teaching some very hard concepts about the kingdom. And we've been looking at some of those. They've been pretty hard. His disciples, which we kind of labeled as truth seekers, which were many more than just the were accepting his word, but nevertheless struggling to understand.

His casual listeners, what I label the sign seekers, were still hanging around, but swaying in their devotion to Jesus. Jesus was not fitting into their mold of messianic king. His religious contingency, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the scribes, the Sanhedrin, were not hooking with him at all. In fact, they were his spiritual enemies, plotting to trap, to catch him in treason, and thus kill him. Jesus is proceeding to Jerusalem, and all of these folks were following him. In fact, the Bible talks about how the crowds had become massive. His words were captivating.

His signs were miraculously off the chart. He had caught the attention of all of these that I've mentioned. And really, if you go back and hit it a little harder, you'll see that you could even throw in some Samaritan and Gentiles in there that were a part of this onslaught, this massive crowd that was listening to Jesus. Chapter 14, 1 through 24, can be broken down into at least three separate sermons. Probably a really gifted preacher could do a sermon series on these verses and create seven or eight. Aren't you glad I'm not that gifted? The content here is so unlimited though.

And I wrestled with all this content as I studied for this sermon. The Lord impressed upon my spirit, and this is the direction we're going to go today, not to get sidetracked with all the details, but to see it as a whole because, and here's the foundation of him jumping in my spirit on this, because it is all happening in one setting, in one divine mealtime. Did you notice the title of my sermon?

Did Kim put that up there? Whataburger. When we were going to McMurray and dating and newlyweds, we discovered Whataburger. It was just down the street from McMurray. And I'm going to tell you, we could have renamed it What a Conversation. All the conversations that went on at Whataburger. There was a pizza inn, it was a lot better than the Pizza Hut.

We'd go eat pizza. And I could rename it not What a Pizza Inn, but What a Conversation at Pizza Inn. There was a group of us that would go together and eat when the smorgasbord, you could do all you wanted. And we'd go with our professor Sam Wilson. And we had What a Pizza Conversation. It was unbelievable the things that we conversed with and over. Y'all been in those kind of settings, hadn't you?

When you've been with guys and the conversation was so rich. So I'm calling this Whataburger, you know, this meal, but it could really be designed as a What a Conversation. So I want you to simply look at 14.1 Truth 24. I'm going to read it. I'm going to just read it all the way through, make some remarks as we travel through it. And then I'm going to focus on three points of conversation. Okay. And you'll catch these, maybe I'm going to give them up front to you.

And then we'll go back and look at them. Honesty shuts up hypocrisy. Hear that? Honesty shuts up hypocrisy. See if you see that when we walk through here. Humility is rewarded. Humility is rewarded.

And hosting is his mission. Hosting is his mission. Aren't those great H's? Honesty, humility, and hosting. So let's start and let's read through this one through 24. And it came about when he went into the house of one of the leaders of the the Pharisees. You know, I thought, why did he even go?

Because Jesus knew they hated him. They hated him. And I'm going to tell you why he went. He went because he loved them. Praying and hoping that at least one of those Pharisees would come into his kingdom. If you go over in the book of Acts, you'll find that at the first Jerusalem council, there were Pharisees there that were helping make decisions. So some Pharisees did come to Jesus.

And so here's one more stab at it. Jesus goes into the leader of the Pharisees house on the Sabbath. That even puts more content to it on the Sabbath to eat bread that they that they were watching him closely. That just tells you the hypocrisy in their life right there. They're watching him closely to see if he messed up. And there in front of him. I thought this was interesting.

Right in front of him was a certain man suffering from dropsy. They said it. They staged this man there in front of him. This man was sick. He was diseased. A Pharisee would never have invited him into his house. He was unclean and they could not be in the presence of that.

But they set him up. They put him there right in front of Jesus.

Dropsy is edema. It is the swelling of the body because of kidney failure or liver failure. The shutdown of your organs and you begin to retain fluid. I'll make a statement about that in just a minute. And Jesus answered and spoke to the lawyers and Pharisees. So lawyers are the scribes and Pharisees saying, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not? What's interesting here is there's no conversation going on.

And yet Jesus brings up this question because he read them like a book. He knew what they were trying to do. There'd been two other instances in Luke already where Jesus healed on the Sabbath. He's setting them up. He's trapping them. They're not trapping him. He's trapping them.

But they kept silent. You hear that? They kept quiet. Now I love that.

He took hold of him. It's kind of like when Winfield hugs me. You know, the big on little. He took hold of him and he healed him and he sent him away. Would you like to see that edema go away? Here's a guy that's all swollen up and all of a sudden you can see his bones again?

Would your eyeballs been popping out? Mine would have been. And he said to them, which one of you shall have a son or an ox fall into a well and will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day? Jesus is teaching right there the very purpose of the Sabbath. And they could not and they could make no reply to this. Hypocrisy has been shut up, hasn't it? Let's go on and read.

He's still at the same dinner table. And he began speaking a parable to the invited guest when he noticed how they were picking out the places of honor at the table. See, there are a lot of jockeying who can sit at the head table. Saying to them, when you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you may have been invited by him. And he who invited you both shall come and say to you, give place to this man. And then in this grace you proceed to occupy the last place. You've been pushed down the ladder to the bottom rung.

But when you are invited, go and recline at the last place. So that when one who has invited you comes, he may say to you, friend, move up higher. Then you will have honor in the sight of all who are at the table with you. It's the one inviting that's moving you up higher. A place of honor. For everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled. And he who humbles himself shall be exalted.

And he also went on to say to the one who had invited him. Two-fold message here, isn't there? When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite the friends or your brothers or your relatives or your rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and repayment comes to you.

I scratched their back, they scratched my back. But when you give a reception, notice this. Invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed since they do not have the means to repay you. That's a big statement. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.

Hold on to that. That's solid stuff right there. And when one of those who were reclining at the table with him heard this, he said to him, to everyone who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God. We'll talk about that in a minute. But evidently he's recognizing a little bit about Jesus, but he's also trying to break the tension. There's a lot of tension in that room. You ever been there?

There's always somebody in the crowd that wants to break the tension in there. This was the guy. But he said to him, Jesus said, I'm going to redirect your thoughts right now. A certain man was giving a big dinner and he invited many. And at the dinner hour, he sent his slaves to say to those had been invited, come for everything is ready now. You've got to understand in Jerusalem at that time, meals didn't just happen quickly. They made the invitation and then they begin to prepare the meal and cook it.

It's almost like two invitations. You've been invited, you've accepted, then we'll send out another invitation to tell you when it's ready. That's what's going on here. But they all alike begin to make excuses. The first one said to him, I bought a piece of land and I need to go out and look at it. Please consider me excused. And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen and I'm going to try them out.

Please consider me excused. You ever bought a used car without trying it out first? That's such a ridiculous, lame excuse. And another one said, I love this one. I have married a wife. And for this reason, I cannot come. You're messing up my priorities here.

We've got a dinner date and a romance time. Don't mess with me. And the slave came back and reported this to the master. Then the head of the household became angry and said to the slave, go out at once into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in here the poor, the crippled, the blind and lame. We've already heard that, hadn't we? And the slave said, master, what you commended has been done and still there is room. There's still room.

And the master said to the slave, go out into the highways and along the hedges and compel them to come in. Wrestle, struggle with them to come in. Not manipulate, but compel them to come in. That, here's the word, that my house may be filled. If that's not the divine purpose of God right there, I don't know what it is. That my house may be filled. For I'll tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my dinner.

Scary word right there. Three points of conversation. I want us to jump through these pretty quickly. We've got a little bit of time here. Number one, honesty shuts up hypocrisy. Verse four, but they kept silent. They had tried to trap Jesus, but he is setting a trap for them.

And it shut them up. Number, verse six, and they could make no reply to this. This is after he explains what the true purpose of the law was all about. And they could make no reply to this. Verses one through six, listen to me, wreak with hypocrisy. This leader of the Pharisees has invited guests, and we know here that it's probably more Pharisees and more lawyers and scribes. It's more of his crowd than any other crowd.

Because they had absolutely no love for Jesus or for who Jesus really cared about. The man with dropsy would never have been invited into this Pharisee's house, never. Unless he could be the ensnaring trap, the setup that would catch Jesus in treason to the law. Jesus, seeing this sick man, and seeing into the hearts of the Pharisees, sets his own trap. Before any conversation took place, did you notice that? Jesus asked them, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not? He's setting the table of conversation.

Then Jesus took hold of this man and healed him. The fourth commandment in Exodus 20, keep the Sabbath holy, keep it set apart, the Sabbath had just been perfected in their sight.

You hear what I'm saying? The real purpose of Sabbath being holy was made visible.

And what did it do? It shut up their hypocrisy. Have you ever been at a loss of words before God? After He caught you in your own hypocritical ways? God ever shut you up and shut you down because He caught you in your moments of hypocrisy? I bet I could get a bunch of testimonies to that if you got up here and had the mic where you've been caught. You know, I've heard people say to me all the time, I don't go to church because of all those hypocrites that go to church.

And I say, yeah, the whole world's full of hypocrites. Lost hypocrites and saved hypocrites. But Jesus has a way of shutting up our hypocrisy and even transforming it. You need to understand that. He can take the hypocrisy in your life and redeem it. He can change you. You don't have to live in hypocritical ways.

They could not cover their tracks. They could not hide their sin. Their hypocrisy had been confronted, revealed, and shut up. They were at a loss for words. At least in that public domain. When they got in that smoke-filled room with closed doors behind the scenes, I can guarantee you, they were saying, we've got to kill him. But for the moment, His honesty, wasn't He just honest, wasn't He?

His honesty shut up their hypocrisy. Think about in John 8, 1-11. Remember the woman that was caught in adultery? And the Pharisees were going to stone her. And Jesus shows up and He said, He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her. And the Bible says, one by one, beginning with the oldest, they slipped away. Without any kind of verbal response. His honesty shut up their hypocrisy.

It's okay for Him to shut us up sometimes. Because it's in those dying moments where we can be healed. In those quiet moments where He can invade our hearts and transform us. Jesus would have loved for that to happen to these Pharisees. And it might have for some of them. Secondly, humility is rewarded. Humility is rewarded.

Verse 11, For everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled. And he who humbles himself shall be exalted. You see the reward there? Verse 14, And you will be blessed for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous. Verses 7-14, Jesus converses not only with the invited guests, but with the one who invited the guests about the real identity of humility. The position of the invited is to enter the house and take the lowest seat available. Years ago, back when George Bush was governor of Texas, Steve Pepper was the lay director and I was the spiritual director of a walk to Emmaus.

David Counts, the state rep who'd been the state rep for years from the Knox City area was on this walk to Emmaus. He came to me after we had an experience called Dying Moments. He came to me and was weeping and said the Lord told me we need to have a state prayer breakfast. I don't know how to do this, but I know the Lord told me to do this. And so I got Pepper and we prayed over him and we prayed. God, you put this on his heart. Orchestrate it.

Build a state breakfast. Prayer breakfast here.

Well, we got an invitation. Pepper and I did for the first state prayer breakfast in the state of Texas. So I drove down to Knox City, got with Steve. We drove down to Austin the night before. The breakfast, you know, you've got to have them early in the morning. And it was at a venue that sat about 1,800 people. And you had to have the invitation to get in.

And we had RSVP'd, so they knew we were coming. And so we presented our invitation and then we walked into this. 1,800 seats. Tables everywhere. Stage up front. Well, you know, we know all the muck. Muckety mucks of Austin are going to be there. And so we did what scripture said.

We sat at the back table. We sat down at the back table.

And the place starts filling up. And David Count sees Steve Pepper and me. He says, you guys come up here. Come up here. Put us right in the front table of where the speaker would be that morning. And I thought, gosh, uncomfortable. You know, and that thing filled up with all the legislators, all the people that are running the government in the state of Texas, filled up. And right before it began, there was three or four seats vacant at our table.

Right before it began, in comes the security from the side, and George Bush, and his wife, and a couple of staff people in the middle. And George sat down right beside me. Now, you've talked about feeling a little exalted beyond where you should be. I did. But I said, George, you know why this prayer breakfast is going on? And he leaned over and said, I've been on a walk to Emmaus too. I know exactly why it's going on.

And that's why you're sitting here with me. Because I know from David that you and Steve helped him come to Jesus. Now, we did the biblical thing though. We sat at the back. We didn't go there for recognition. We went there to praise God that the message was going to be preached in that place that morning. And that people at those tables would be given a list of things to pray for.

And we would all pray thunder prayer at the same time. And our governor thundered prayer while we were there, just like Steve and I did. He was praying too. You know, when I read this, I immediately thought, you know, I had experienced real humility there that morning. Likewise, the one throwing the banquet needed to redo his guest list by asking those who could not reciprocate. Now, that wasn't too biblical there that morning. I'm sure there were people that David had in there that he was scratching their back in order that they might scratch his back on some legislative issue.

It probably made good sense. You know, you've all heard that if you scratch my back, I'll scratch your back. Humility runs just the opposite of that. You hear that? Invite the poor. Invite the crippled, the lame, the blind. Why? Because they cannot pay you back.

Humility sanctifies our motives. If I make any important statement today, it's that. Humility sanctifies our motives. Jesus said, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. When I was in seminary, there was a little booklet that Dr.

Oswald went through. It was a spiritual devotional book written by Puritans. The Valley of Vision. Some of you may have come across this in your spiritual journey. And in the introduction, let me just state the introduction to you. It said, let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up. That the way to be low is to be high.

That the broken heart is the healed heart. That the contrite spirit is a rejoicing spirit. That the repentant soul is a victorious soul. That to have nothing is to possess all. That to bear the cross is to wear the crown. That to give is to receive. That the valley is the place of vision.

Who is our example of rewarded humility? I'm not going to read all of it to you, but you can go read Philippians 2, 5 through 11. Where Jesus taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of man, being found in the appearance of man, he humbled himself to becoming obedient to the death on the cross, even the cross. Therefore, God highly exalted him and bestowed him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow and those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God. That's true humility. Take up your cross and follow me. Verse 14 says, And you will be blessed, for you will be repaid, notice this, at the resurrection of the righteous.

Verse 14 says, That's coming. That is coming. When the Lord returns, that's coming. Those of us that walked in humility will be highly exalted. You got your ticket? I got mine. I got my invitation.

And when he says the dinner's ready, I'm going to be ready. Humility is rewarded. Guys, it's not just a grubble in the dirt.

There's purpose for it. There's sanctification for it. There's grace in humility. There's exaltation in humility. Hallelujah. Lastly, hosting is his mission. Verse 23, Go out into the highways and along the hedges and compel them to come in in order that my house may be filled.

At this point, at this table of bread, the tension between the Pharisees and Jesus was so thick that you could cut it with a knife. In order to break the tension, probably one of the Pharisees, we don't know for sure, not the leader, insightfully said, Blessed is everyone who shall eat this bread in the kingdom of God. I want to show you something. He shifted this meal from a worldly dinner that Jesus was attending to a heavenly feast. Do you notice that? Maybe this Pharisee was beginning to understand a little bit about Jesus and His kingdom. Maybe I'm being a little over complimentary to this person.

I don't know. But Jesus jumped on that statement like a hornet. Why? Because it gave him the opportunity to establish right then and there that He is the host of the heavenly feast. The ones who invited first what I call the covenant people of God, Abraham's people, were now notified that the real meal was ready to come gobbled up. They were full of excuses. Do you see that?

They were full of excuses why they could not come. Our world, there are tons of people who've identified Christ as Savior. That are full of excuses why they cannot follow Him. So the host then invites the needy, the receptive, the hungry, and some come. But his house is still not full. So then he broadens his invitation to anyone and everyone. Boy, there's the Wesleyan battle cry right there. Whosoever wills.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him. You see that? The broadening has happened. That whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Psalm 23, 5 and 6 says, Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil. That's what they did when you came.

They cleaned you up before you got into the table. My cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. And notice what this says. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Hosting. Hosting that banquet-eating feast is His mission.

That's His mission on this earth that whosoever wills might come. It's sad that those excuse themselves out of that meal. I'm not excusing myself out. I'm going to sit right there in front of all those folks that are my enemies and enjoy that meal. I'm going to be in the house of the Lord forever. In conclusion, you have to say this because this is how He ends up that parable. Verse 24 For I tell you none of those men who were invited shall taste my dinner.

The judgment of God is a real thing. Now in its context here, this is referring to the house of Israel. None of those men, they've given us all these lame excuses why they can't be at that final meal. None of those men are going to taste this dinner. That's sad, isn't it? But it is over arched with the host still inviting because he hadn't come yet. That dinner has not happened yet.

What that means is the invitation is still going forth to any and everyone that would trust Him as Savior and Lord. He's our host. Ever been to a dinner and you knew the host?

Aren't they gracious? I've been to so many different kinds of dinners and the hosts were so gracious. The Lord Jesus is gracious. He invites you to His banquet forever. Forever. That's one meal I'm not going to miss. I can't imagine the conversation around that table. Mind boggling.

And I want to be there and be involved in it. If you've not firmed up that commitment in your life, you tell me and we'll get it done. We'll do what's most important to make sure you're at that feast. Let's bow together in prayer. Lord, I thank You so much for Your Word.

For its honesty. About humility. And about who the host is. Ultimately in our lives. Lord, I pray for any person here that would have any kind of inclination that they're not going to be in on that feast. That You take care of that and put that invitation squarely in their heart.

In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.