A sermon preached at Covenant Presbyterian Church of Fort Smith, Arkansas on February 22, 2026.
He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” When one of those who reclined at table with him heard these things, he said to him, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” But he said to him, “A man once gave a great banquet and invited many. And at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’ But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’ So the servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.’ And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’ And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet’” (Luke 14:12–24).[1]
When you are invited to a dinner party, what things might you say to your host? “Thank you,” is always appropriate. Perhaps, “What a lovely home you have,” or “The meal was excellent,” “The conversation was engaging,” “You are a gracious host,” or even “May I have that recipe?” What you are likely not to say is, “You invited the wrong folks.” But Jesus, in a sense, said it.
In all fairness, there had been tension from the beginning. Upon Jesus’s arrival to that Sabbath supper, a man suffering from dropsy, or edema, was put before him. It was a set-up to be sure, to see if Jesus would heal the man on the Sabbath. And he would and he did, and all before supper was served. But the tension surely mounted, when the host and his guests, posturing for positions of prominence, gathered around the dinner table, and Jesus told a parable about not seeking the place of honor but humility. Only the most obtuse among them would have missed the inference.
But as we see in our text today, Jesus wasn’t finished, continuing his teaching, reproof, and correction, telling them whom they should invite to a dinner party, not friends or siblings or relatives, or even that rich neighbor, but the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, those who cannot repay the favor. It was counter-cultural teaching to be sure and contrary to their idea of generosity and hospitality. It’s often contrary to ours too.
How easy it is to love those who love us? How easy it is to give to those who give to us? How easy it is to be generous to those who will be generous to us? Reciprocity is logical and easy. But if governed by the selfish interests of our flesh, it can also blind us to the needs of those who are not family, or friends, to those who may be unlovable, indigent, or destitute.
To be clear, Jesus is employing hyperbole. He’s not instructing you to call off Sunday lunch or cancel your friends and family Christmas party. Jesus too attended a wedding feast with his mother and brought alone his buddies. He stayed in the home of his close friends Lazarus, Mary, and Martha, and ate most meals with his best friends. The point of Jesus’s hyperbole is not to shame the pleasures of friends and family but to call into question the motives behind our generosity. God’s blessing rests on the one who is generous to the one who cannot pay.
The Christian life is lived not according to the lust of the flesh but the Spirit of Christ, who gave himself up for us. Our generosity and hospitality are to be directed not by what we can get but by what Christ gave. This of course does not negate discernment, as we are to be as “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matt. 10:16), but discernment does not negate selfless generosity; in fact, it confirms it. But the point of Jesus’s instruction extends beyond the practical to the prophetic, made obvious by the parable that follows.
The Great Banquet
Have you ever known someone who has a superb knowledge of the Bible and theology, but the more you’re around him you realize he doesn’t live what he knows? You know the type: He’s typically the first to speak, and typically often, but with veiled intent, wishing everyone to behold the breadth of his knowledge. His objective is neither the glory of God nor the good of his neighbor but the recognition such knowledge seemingly deserves. I see him often at our Presbytery meetings, and he’s always at our General Assembly. He was also at the dinner table with Jesus. How do we know? Because after Jesus confronted the lack of generosity and hospitality of his host and invitees, a man blurts out, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” There he is. But what did he mean?
Though not obvious to us, the man heard Jesus’s banquet instructions, picked up on his hyperbole, and knowing the Scriptures, he connected Jesus’s teaching to the prophesied heavenly banquet. According to the prophet Isaiah, God will host a banquet upon heavenly Zion “for all peoples”
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,
of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.
And he will swallow up on this mountain
the covering that is cast over all peoples,
the veil that is spread over all nations.
He will swallow up death forever;
and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces,
and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth,
for the LORD has spoken.
It will be said on that day,
“Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.
This is the LORD; we have waited for him;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation” (Isa. 25:6-9).
Perhaps the man was responding to Jesus’s reference to the resurrection of the just, but whatever the case, the man’s exclamation also revealed his presumption; he presumed he would be present at the heavenly banquet.
It is important to remember that the Pharisees believed that as the children of Israel, as ethnic heirs of God’s covenant with Abraham, as recipients of the Mosaic Law, as citizens of the land of the Davidic throne, as those who worshiped at Jerusalem’s temple, they were guaranteed a place at the heavenly banquet table. But Jesus provides a parable that confronts this religious assumption, telling of a great banquet, of which those first invited chose not to attend. Instead, they made excuses. One had bought a field requiring inspection. One had bought an ox requiring examination. One was recently married; need I say more? But in considering each of these excuses, we find them absurd. Who does their due diligence on a piece of real estate after they’ve purchased it? Who purchases business equipment but waits to inspect it until afterward? Who gets married and then passes up an opportunity to take his new bride to the party of a lifetime? No one, but they did.
Like the master of Jesus’s parable, God first invited Israel to his heavenly banquet. Unlike any banquet ever given, it will be held in God’s eternal kingdom, a banquet so grand God sent his only Son to carry the invitation in person, proclaiming the good news to Israel, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand . . . Come, for everything is now ready” (Mark 1:15; Luke 14:17). But in general, Israel rejected the free offer of the gospel, rejecting the master’s invitation. Church Father Cyril of Alexandrias said of those in Jesus’s parable, “[They] scorned a surpassing invitation, because they had turned aside to earthly things and focused their mind on the vain distractions of this world.”[2]
They are not alone. Many treat God’s invitation given through Christ the same way today. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not only the greatest news in the world, it’s also an invitation: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16 NKJV). But not everyone who receives the invitation accepts it. Many and varied are the excuses. Some are outside the church; some are in. Some have the knowledge of that man at the table; some barely know the gospel. But apart from saving faith, they will not be at the great banquet.
This is a call to examine your heart. Have you accepted God’s invitation and believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, or are you full of excuses that will keep you from coming? Jesus came not only carrying God’s invitation but also securing our seat at the table. In our sin, we were not fit for God’s kingdom, but Christ died for our sins that he might bring us to God. Whether you are young or old, it’s time to stop making excuses: “because, 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. . . . For ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved’” (Rom. 10:9-10, 13).
The Great Invitation
In Jesus’s parable, when those first invited to the great banquet rejected his invitation, the master was angry, but he did not cancel the event. Instead, in his mercy he extended his invitation to “the poor and crippled and blind and lame” (Luke 14:21), to the cultural outcasts. And this is, of course, the connection between Jesus’s parable and his dinner table admonition of whom to invite to a banquet. The master of Jesus’s parable widened the scope of his invitation, reaching outward to the less fortunate, the kind of people who would never have been invited to dine with the ruler of the synagogue. And this great invitation has been given to you and me too, beggars who bring nothing to the banquet but our brokenness.
The man at the dinner tables was right, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” But those who will eat bread will not do so presuming upon their ethnicity, religious heritage, or even their piety. We will feast in the house of Zion only because,
God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace [we] have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him [at the heavenly banquet], so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:4-7).
Blessed indeed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!”
The Great Commission
But there will be more, as Jesus’s parable reveals, because great is the banquet table of the kingdom of heaven. The master of Jesus’s parable sent his servant out to extend his invitation, saying, “Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled” (Luke 14:23). The highways were the roads beyond the city, often bordered by hedges denoting rural property lines. The master’s invitation goes well beyond the known borders, outward to a people who at first knew nothing of the master’s banquet.
But note the imperatives of the master’s directive: “Go out” and “compel.” The master’s servant could not carry the invitation staying at home. He must go out to new places to tell new people about the banquet, compelling them to come.
Phil Ryken keenly observes that in Jesus’s parable the command to go and compel the people “does not actually get carried out . . .
The master tells his servant to go out, but we do not know for certain whether he obeys. We assumed that he does, but Jesus does not say this, perhaps for an important reason: because it was not yet time for the gospel to go out into the wider world. That job was for the apostles, and for us.”[3]
But the time did come and has come, as our resurrected Lord’s commissioned his apostles shortly before his ascension, saying,
All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age (Matt. 28:18-20).
No longer would the invitation be confined to Israel but would advance to every tribe, tongue, and nation.
And it is here that we find ourselves in Jesus’s parable, too. As servants of our master, we are commissioned to go into the highways and the hedges, compelling all who will hear that they have been invited to come to the heavenly banquet. Some go, some send, but we all participate in the Great Commission. Let us then pray and serve to that end, because we want as many as possible to come to the banquet, that our Lord’s house may be filled.
[1] Unless referenced otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version
(Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2001).
[2] Philip Graham Ryken, Luke, Vol. 2 (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2009), 82.
[3] Philip Graham Ryken, Luke, Vol. 2 (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2009), 86.
Planter, Pastor, Preacher 