A sermon preached at Covenant Presbyterian Church of Fort Smith, Arkansas on February 15, 2026.
One Sabbath, when he went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching him carefully. And behold, there was a man before him who had dropsy. And Jesus responded to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?” But they remained silent. Then he took him and healed him and sent him away. And he said to them, “Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?” And they could not reply to these things. Now he told a parable to those who were invited, when he noticed how they chose the places of honor, saying to them, [8] “When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this person,’ and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 14:1–11).[1]
Investor Warren Buffett famously said, “If you’ve been playing poker for half an hour and you still don’t know who the patsy is, you’re the patsy.”[2] Jesus was no patsy, that is, someone easily taken advantage of; he knew well the game the Pharisees were playing. When invited by a ruler of the Pharisees for Sabbath supper, he went graciously but knew it was a set-up. He who knows the secrets of the heart,[3] who understands every intent of our thoughts,[4] knew that the Pharisees were lying in wait for him, to catch him in something he might say or do.[5] And he knew that it was the Sabbath, not a day for play but worship, not a day for work but rest, but also not a day for sabotage but acts of necessity and mercy.
Jesus worshiped on the Sabbath, rested on the Sabbath, and healed the sick and lame on the Sabbath more than any other day. And this became a primary point of contention with the Pharisees, who believed Jesus’s miraculous works of mercy broke their Sabbath laws. But the Son of God would not obey man-made rules that ignored the need to show mercy. So, when he entered the ruler’s house and “there was a man before him who had dropsy” (Luke 14:2), he knew it was a set-up, and he knew precisely what he would do.
Dropsy is a severe, chronic medical condition characterized by abnormal fluid accumulation and swelling, likely caused by heart, kidney, or liver disease. It would have been apparent to everyone present that the man was suffering. Surely, the man hoped Jesus would heal him. Truly, the Pharisees knew he would. But before their plan would unfold, Jesus asks this penetrating question: “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?” (Luke 14:3). If Jesus were to heal the man, theoretically, would it break the law? It’s a yes or no question.
Listen to their response. Nothing, not a word. Perhaps you could have heard a pin drop. But why? Why the silence? It wasn’t because they didn’t know the law. And it wasn’t because they didn’t know the distinction between their rabbinic tradition and the Fourth Commandment. They were silent because their hearts were hardened to Jesus. They would not, they could not believe.
The Silence of Unbelief
Concerning the man with dropsy, Jesus healed him and sent him away. He would not let them continue to shame him, as if he were bait. But the deed had been done, healing another person on the Sabbath and so breaking the Pharisees’ rules. But not a word was spoken, nothing was said. So, Jesus asks another question, a theoretical one, but one that confronts their hard hearts: “Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?” (Luke 14:5).
In some Greek manuscripts, the word “son” here is “donkey.” (As a father of two sons, I realize how the two terms can be confused). Either way, the point remains the same, but I prefer the word “donkey,” because it emphasizes the point: If you had a farm animal essential to your agrarian livelihood and it fell into a well, would you wait a day? At the bottom of the well it would suffer and perhaps die. Better to have mercy upon that animal and save it on the Sabbath Day than wait until the next. Who wouldn’t show this kind of mercy?
The point is clear: If one would have mercy upon an animal on the Sabbath, how much more so a man made in God’s image? You get it, I get it, and so did they. But, Luke tells us, “they could not reply to these things” (14:6), not because they could not speak but because they knew they could not argue with Jesus. Truth himself, wisdom embodied, had spoken, and they were dumbfounded in their unbelief.
In their silence, they would not rejoice in Jesus’s healing miracle or in the man’s health. They would not admit that mercy triumphs over judgment.[6] They would not agree, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). They would not believe that he who healed on the Sabbath is Lord of the Sabbath.[7] And so, they stayed silent.
Christian faith is not silent. God’s Word is clear: “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved” (Rom. 10:9-10). But the hardened heart would rather believe lies than listen to the Word of God. The hardened heart would rather trust in the world’s wisdom than believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. But in God’s mercy, he still opens the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf, that dead men walking may be brought to life through the miracle of the gospel. And it is this gospel that we are called to carry to our neighbor and the nations.
In the second chapter of Romans, the apostle Paul confronts our common presumptions of enjoying “the riches of [God’s] kindness and forbearance and patience,” while seemingly oblivious to the fact that “God’s kindness is meant to lead [us] to repentance?” (Rom. 2:4). It is all too easy to insulate ourselves from the spiritual death and suffering around us, to consider ourselves superior, forgetting the grace and mercy we have been shown by God. But this lost and dying world needs the kindness of the gospel, a mercy they must hear from you and me. They need an act of necessity and mercy that may betray your politics, compromise your convenience, and ruffle your man-made constraints, but like the man with dropsy, the lost have been put before us. Let us have mercy, extend grace, and give the world the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Place of Honor
One wonders if indigestion was served with supper at the Pharisee’s house. Because as they all postured and positioned themselves around the dinner table, Jesus told this parable:
When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this person,’ and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 14:7-11).
The parable surely stung. While no wedding feast, before supper they had jockeyed for places of honor at the ruler’s table. I wonder where the Lord of glory was seated?
But beyond the obvious confrontation of their selfish intentions, what was the purpose of Jesus’s parable? While there is ethical wisdom to glean from it, he did not give it to improve dining etiquette nor as a veiled strategy for seeking promotion. In contrast to the way of the world, he gives us a glimpse into the way of his kingdom, which is entered not by outmaneuvering our neighbor but by the humility of faith.
At the wedding feast of Jesus’s parable, some seek their place of prominence through their own self-righteousness, even boasting of their self-exalting piety. They expect to be honored because of who they are and what they have done, thanking God that they are not like other sinners, extortionists, evil-doers, fornicators, or even tax collectors. They fast twice weekly, tithe off the gross regularly, and pray intentionally long prayers. They deserve the best seat at the table, they think. But how shocked they will be to hear the host say, “I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!” (Luke 13:27).
Also at the wedding feast, there will be some who do not consider themselves worthy to be there at all, standing far off from the competition for honor, lifting their eyes heavenward, beating their breast, and crying out, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”[8] They expect to be cast out of the wedding but for the grace of their host. And while they don’t expect the best seat, they will be surprised to find themselves to be seated with “Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God” (13:28). To their amazement they “will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table” (14:10). “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled,” Jesus says, “but the one who humbles himself will be exalted” (14:11).
In the kingdom of God, there is no place for self-righteous boasting or meritorious maneuvering, or sinful pride. It is only the sinner, who is humbled to the point of desperation, knowing his only hope is to be shown mercy and graciously saved, that looks to the Savior. And it is this salvation that informs all of life, how we think, what we do, living life in the wisdom of Christ.
The Wisdom of Humility
“Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God,” the apostle Peter admonishes us, “so that at the proper time he may exalt you” (1 Pet. 5:6). There is no place for pride in the kingdom of God, but we may all boast in the cross of Christ. “We are beggars, this is true,” Martin Luther said on his death bed,[9] and then passed from the poverty of humanity into the riches of heaven. It was a helpful final phrase before departure, and a reminder to us all, since “the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
And yet, our flesh entices us to think of ourselves more highly than we ought, to compare ourselves and our Christian performance to others, to seemingly jockey for position in the kingdom of God. Such is our self-deception. In the first sentence of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin says, “The whole sum of our wisdom—wisdom, that is, which deserves to be called true and assured—broadly consists of two parts, knowledge of God and knowledge of ourselves.”[10] There is great wisdom in knowing God; indeed, we must, but we cannot mature in our knowledge of God if we are constantly in the way.
J.C. Ryle explains, “The man who really knows himself,—who knows God and his infinite majesty and holiness,—who knows Christ, and the price at which he was redeemed,—that man will never be a proud man.”[11] But Ryle does not mean know as mere knowledge but a knowing that saves and sanctifies, a knowing that keeps the majesty of God and glory of the gospel at the forefront of his thoughts, knowing “Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). Because he who looks to Christ takes his eyes off himself and rests them on his Lord,
who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, . . . emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:6-8).
And he who humbled himself by taking humanity upon himself exemplified that humility throughout his ministry.
He could easily have refused the Pharisee’s invitation to supper, and certainly been justified in staying away, but he didn’t. He considered the need for sinners to hear the truth of God’s Word of greater importance than their opinion of him or threat to him. He could easily have taken the day off and healed the man with dropsy the following day, but he didn’t. He compassionately considered that man’s need to be healed above his need to rest. And it was this humility that he carried all the way to the cross.
He was shamed, slandered, and tortured for nothing he did but what we did, even to the point of death, even death on a cross. He deserved none of it and took all of it, humbling himself that he might bring “many sons to glory” (Heb. 2:10). And as God’s sons and daughters, we glory in God’s son. For he who died for our sin and resurrected for our life has ascended, and “God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:9-11). Amen.
[1] Unless referenced otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version
(Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2001).
[2] https://global.morningstar.com/en-ca/personal-finance/12-lessons-on-money-and-more-from-warren-buffett-and-charlie-munger
[3] Ps. 44:21
[4] 1 Chron. 28:9
[5] Luke 11:53
[6] James 2:13
[7] Luke 6:5
[8] Luke 18:13
[9] https://www.1517.org/articles/we-are-beggars-martin-luthers-final-words-and-the-heart-of-the-gospel
[10] White translation, pg. 1.
[11] Ryle, 115
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