Sermon - Trinity XVII 2019 - Luke 14:1-11

The Pharisees were proud people. “One Sabbath, when Jesus went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching him carefully.” This Sabbath dinner wasn’t your typical meal, it was a feast! The pharisees would gather together on the Sabbath in order to gorge themselves at this rather pretentious dinner. 

Jesus noticed that the pride of the pharisees was rather notable, “when He noticed how they chose the places of honor.” A great deal of thought went into where you sat because it was a symbol of how important you were. So you certainly didn’t want to sit with the losers and be numbered among them, but neither did you want to sit higher than you deserve, since you could get knocked down and told to sit lower, which would be embarrassing. So you needed to evaluate yourself in order to determine how great you are and which place of honor you deserve.

These pharisees were so distracted by their pride and seating arrangement, they were so distracted by watching Jesus like a hawk waiting for him to slip up,  they didn’t even stop to help the poor guy who walked in among them. “Behold, there was a man before Jesus who had dropsy.” The pharisees were so distracted by themselves they didn’t even think to help care for the sick man in their midst. But the old Proverb is true: “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” Thus in our text, the Lord confronts their pride just as the Lord confronts our pride. God shames the proud, and He heals the humble.

The pride of the pharisees is frankly no different than our own. Jesus uses the example of a wedding feast in His parable, and wedding receptions in our day are only slightly different. At many wedding receptions, a great deal of thought goes into the seating arrangements, right? It’s up the hosts to properly place everyone at just the right tables without offending anyone. And if you show up to a wedding, you don’t usually get to pick where you sit. If you’re simply an acquaintance, you better not sit at the head table nor the tables marked for grandparents and other close relatives and friends. If you sit in a seat reserved for someone worthy of greater honor than you, you’re going to be extremely embarrassed when asked to move. 

None of this would be an issue if we were humble, but the problem is that we’re far from humble, and we consider ourselves much more highly than we ought to. Our pride causes us to look upon others as less than ourselves. When we see others as somehow less, then it makes it easier for us to sin against them since we must be more important than they are.

For instance, if you consider your neighbor to be a fool who deserves their misery, you’re not likely to help them when they’re in trouble, like the man with dropsy wasn’t helped by the pharisees. If you consider your neighbor to be a naive idiot and yourself a genius, then you’re likely to dismiss out of hand anything they say, and assume yourself to be right and them wrong. If you consider your neighbor to be a worthless member of society, then you have no problem harming them, stealing from them, or killing them. It’s because of sinful pride that we gossip and slander. It’s because of pride that we look at pornography. It’s because of pride that we don’t give charitably. It’s because of pride that Satan fell from heaven and it’s pride that He tempts you with today. “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, ... Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” Seeking to share his pride with you.

My brothers and sisters in Christ, let’s not make use of the old cliche and just talk about how terrible the pharisees were, because once again that’s pride talking where we consider ourselves better than men who devoted their lives to the study of God’s Word and service in the temple. Instead of considering how prideful and wretched the pharisees were, let’s humble ourselves before the Lord, and acknowledge our own prideful and wretched lives. 

For our pride, we ought to feel ashamed. We are like the someone invited to a wedding feast, who sits in a place of honor! We are the poor miserable sinner! The master of the wedding feast, our Lord, comes over to us and kicks us down from our high place of pride and then in shame we take the lowest seat. Thus we proud sinners are be called on to repent, and in shame we must take the lowest place. 

Shame on us who think of ourselves so highly and our neighbors so poorly. Shame on us who think of our opinions more highly than God’s Word. Shame on us who gossip and slander our neighbors. Shame on us who fail to act charitably. Shame on us who look at others as merely objects of our lust. Shame on us for failing to help our neighbor in body and soul. Shame on us who’re proud and under the delusion of the evil one.

Then, once you’ve humbled yourself and have gone and sat in the lowest place, your host comes and says to you “friend, move up higher.” Once you’ve humbled yourself to the point of contrition and repentance, to the point of shame, then your Lord comes to you and frees you from the baggage of your shame by healing all of your iniquities! When Jesus forgives your wretched prideful sins, then He frees you from them and from your shame!

How does your Lord do this? By first humbling Himself. Your Lord Jesus is the one who does exactly what He commands. Jesus, who is God almighty, the only omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God, humbled Himself for you. In the humiliation, Jesus came down from heaven and was incarnate of the virgin Mary, took on flesh and blood, took on the sins of all mankind, and was doomed to die the cursed death of a murderer on the cross.

But when Jesus seated Himself at the lowest place of shame, hanging naked, beaten, and bloodied on Calvary, God the Father lifted Him from the lowest place and seated Him at His right hand in heaven, the most glorious place of honor at the great heavenly wedding feast. “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and has now ascended to the right hand of the Father.

Because we could never properly humble ourselves sufficiently as we must, our Lord Jesus did it for us. Jesus took all of the shame for our pride and He died in the most shameful manner in the history of the world. Jesus, the most exalted in all creation, humbled Himself for us, the most shameful in all creation, in order to exalt us and lift us up to heaven with Him.

I want you to be comforted, my friends, that no matter how great your shame is, God’s grace and mercy overcomes it. Consider the remarkable mercy Jesus showed to the man with dropsy. He didn’t avoid this grotesque shameful sickness which made your body swell up with fluid, almost to the point of bursting, as gross as that is to consider, Jesus “took him and healed him and sent him away.” Your Lord doesn’t shy away from your grotesque shameful sickness of pride, but He takes you, shame and all, and heals you. 

You who’re ashamed, be comforted by Christ who takes your shame away and exalts you by taking away your sin from you. You who’re ashamed of having drunk too much, ashamed of having said or done something foolish, ashamed of your failures, ashamed of your public and secret sins, ashamed of having hurt so many people and treating so many poorly: Jesus takes that shame, makes it His, crucifies it on the cross, and buries in the grave where it stays forever.

And while it’s good to be ashamed of your prideful sin, since shame is the result of sin, don’t be ashamed of the Gospel which is yours in Christ Jesus. Because the Gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. The Gospel is beautiful news that your shameful deeds are forgiven by the blood of Christ. “Therefore, as it is written, let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.”