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| Rev. Brian Wilkie |
Pastor of St. Andrew's Christian Community
Rockland, Ontario
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PODCAST LINK to CFRA broadcast - Sunday, October 16th, 2016:
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Broadcast Notes:
This program is sponsored by Good News Christian Ministries, P.O. Box 184, Rideau Ferry, ON K0G 1W0. I’m your host today, Brian Wilkie of St. Andrew’s Christian Church in Rockland. As always, I want to start by thanking you, our listeners; we are so grateful for your encouragement and support. Please remember that you can always visit our website for materials to encourage and support you in your Christian walk, and if you miss an episode of the show you can go to our website and download the podcast or mp3 of our broadcast. Details can be found on our website at www.gncm.ca.
Special Thanks to Today’s Sponsor…
Today, I want to thank one of our regular sponsors, Bruce Newman, and today he’s sponsoring this show.
And, in doing so, he wants to salute Jericho Road Christian Ministries, a local registered charity, for their outstanding service to the community.
Thank you Bruce, for your sponsorship and thank you to Jericho Road, for the service to the community that they have done here for so many years!
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‘Gratitude for God’s Invitations’
As this broadcast is being put on the air, it’s just after Thanksgiving and I’ve must have had feasts on my mind, because I was thinking about some of the teachings of Jesus in which he told values of the kingdom in talking about how people have their feasts. So here’s a passage from scripture in Luke chapter 14 verses 1-14 where he makes three observations about feasting.
‘One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, who 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, he healed him and sent him on his way.
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 honor at the table, he told them this parable: “When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, 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 honored in the presence of all your fellow guests. For everyone who exalt themselves will be humbled, and he who humble himself will be exalted.”
Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and then you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”’
Jesus has a lot to say about how we live in the world. How we share our blessings with others, and how we position ourselves as we walk through life. And we’ll speak a good deal more about that, but first I want you to listen to song that picks up the theme of thanksgiving and, I hope, carries it into another week as we hope to carry our gratitude through the year. This song is Give Thanks and it’s sung by this instance by Todd Warren, from a collection of the top worship songs of the 1990’s. Will you listen to it with me?
In the gospel of Luke Jesus address’s a couple of issues when he’s eating at different peoples’ houses. He was invited because he was a celebrity and some people invited him because the wanted to hear what he had to say and others just seemed to want to be seen with him. Or test him and check him out. And often when he was at the house of one of the strict sect of Pharisees, he was being carefully watched. And he was also however, a careful observer, a watcher of others, and he was ready to step in and teach a lesson and help to guide people as he shared time with them. In this particular passage there are three different sections, and I’ll touch on the first couple and then spend a bit more time on the third. Because he went into the house of a prominent Pharisee and he saw a man who was suffering from an illness. Everybody else was enjoying their food and having a good time, but obviously this person had a difficulty that made it hard for him to fully participate and enjoy the day. He was sick and Jesus knew that he was able to heal this man, but he also knew that it would offend some people if he did work on the Sabbath day and in the estimation of the Pharisees, healing somebody was work.
Now, he asked them whether it was ok to heal on the Sabbath day, but they kept silent. Not wanting to be trapped in their own responses. And so he went ahead and healed the man. It would appear that the Pharisees were not happy about this. They were keeping silent, but not with the contented silence of someone who has seen the right thing done, but with an angry silence, and he teaches them using a parable, a metaphor, he says, “If you were to have an ox or even your own child, fall into a well on the Sabbath day, wouldn’t you rescue that person?”
The question is the answer, to why Jesus did what he did. Why he considers it proper to heal on the Sabbath. Because the Sabbath is a day for doing good things, not for doing evil and to ignore the need of another person, the present need of another person, is not a good thing. He reached out and healed that person, and that person had a burden lifted from their lives.
When we consider the Sabbath as Christians, we sometimes are troubled by what exactly does it mean to take a day of holiness and a day of rest. And Jesus wants over and over again to communicate to his disciples that the Sabbath is a special day. That the day of resting and the day dedicated to God is a very important thing, but he says in a very clear teaching elsewhere in scripture that the Sabbath was made for man. Not man for the Sabbath. What he’s saying, is that God gave you a day of rest and relaxation of recuperation, a day to re-focus on what’s important and it wasn’t intended to be a burden and a terribly difficult thing you had to endure. In fact the Sabbath, the day of focusing on God and his grace and his love, ought to be the best day of the week. Not the most tiresome. And he goes on when he notices the guests are trying to sit strategically at a feast.
Now, you’ve probably at a family dinner, or when you’ve been invited to a guest’s house, it’s probably small enough that you’ve simply asked, “Where did you want me to sit?” Or, if it’s a wedding you find your name tag on a table, but in this instance, this was a gathering probably of people who felt they were important in the community and felt they ought to be part of this welcoming committee for Jesus. It wasn’t the degree of organization that a great dinner has when there’s name tags on the table. And so people were trying to figure out where they should sit. They wanted to show off their importance, but they wanted to carefully arrange themselves, and Jesus took them to task saying’ “Why are you trying to sit at the best place at the table?” Just for me, if you’re concerned about your honour, if you’re concerned about your glory, then why not take the lowest place so that the host has to move you up a few seats.
Now, Jesus wasn’t just talking about feasts here, was he? He was talking about the way we live our lives. We often try to demonstrate how important we are with the kind of jobs we do, and the kind of jobs we don’t do. There are people, we think, who are able to clean the toilets and wash the dishes, but we’re too important for that, we might think. And Jesus says take the lowest place, and the one who takes the lowest place stands a very good chance of being lifted up and exalted. Of the host saying, no don’t take the lowest place, I’ve got a better place for you. You’re a special friend. And likewise when we go through life and we’re doing the servants duties, when we’re taking care of the least and doing the jobs that perhaps are thankless and don’t seem to befit someone of great importance, we can be sure that Jesus is telling us that our Father in heaven will notice what we are doing and he will be glad that we were willing to humble ourselves, and having humbled ourselves, God will exalt us.
You know, when I get to heaven I don’t expect to get moved up to the highest place, I know that one’s reserved for Jesus, and I know that the places on his right hand and his left hand are reserved for others. In truth I’ll be happy just to have the lowest place at that great banquet feast and I’m sure you would be too.
One commentator talked about the surprises he expected to find when he came to heaven. He said he would be very surprised to see some people there that he never thought to be there, and he would be extraordinarily surprised that there were some people that weren’t there that he thought were sure bets to be there. But he said the greatest surprise of all, would be realizing that he is there. No, to be at God’s feet is not to be concerned about the high place or the low place, but just to be there. Just to be with him is a great joy. Let’s set our hearts on what’s most important. Not on our status, but the fact that we have a relationship with Jesus Christ; That we are friends of God, and it doesn’t matter whether we are bff’s or whether we’re just good friends with our Lord and Saviour. Just to know him and to be with him is joy enough.
In a few moments we’re going to take a look at that last section when Jesus talks about who’s coming for dinner. But before we do that, I would like you to listen again to an upbeat song that really focuses on what I’m going to speak about next. It’s a very energetic song from Steven Curtis Chapman called All About Love. And in this next part of scripture Jesus talks about extending our love beyond the ordinary, and I hope you’ll listen to this song and then we’ll get back to this message.
In the final part of this scripture that we’re looking at today, Jesus address’s his hosts and he asks the question about who’s coming for dinner. He says when you give a lunch, or dinner, don’t invite your friends, your brothers, your relatives, or your rich neighbors. If you do, they may invite you back and you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind, and then you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous. Jesus teaches above all things, he teaches us to love one another, and he teaches us to extend our love to the degree that God extends his love. Not just to the people who are nice to us, not just to the people who are good, but God extends his love to everyone.
In the famous Sermon on the Mount from Matthew’s gospel, he says, what does it benefit you, or what is it special about you if you love those who love you? Even the pagans and the unrighteous do that. But love your enemies. Love those that persecute you. Pray for them and bless them. Jesus distinguishes between the ordinary love that we have between friends and family, and the love that God has, because for an element of our love for others is often the payback. It’s a mutually, agreeable, relationship, where we scratch their back and they scratch ours. We often find sometimes that if a friendship becomes unbalanced, where we seem to be giving more and the other person is not doing their part, the friendship becomes strained and the love becomes a challenge.
But God is saying that’s precisely where love comes into it, where love for someone else and love for the Heavenly Father are at play, because often our relationships can be about self love. They can be about being nice to people who give nice stuff to us.
We used to joke as teenagers about the simplistic morality that seemed to be all around us, which summed up in the phrase, “it’s nice to be nice to the nice”. That’s not even morality. That’s just common sense. It’s nice to be nice to the nice. But Jesus calls us to a higher love that can change the world: when we show our love to people who can’t pay it back. People who can’t in any way return the gift that we’re giving, and whether that gift is time spent listening to somebody as they pour out their heart. Or whether it’s a dinner given to somebody who’s hungry and unable to feed themselves. Or whether it’s any other kind of service to someone who’s not able to compensate us for it, then, we’re showing a selfless love like Jesus showed for us.
Jesus also tells us not to have a shallow love: a love that is easily offended and easily turned aside. So that he tells us to forgive one another. Even at one point when the disciples are astonished at his claim that they need to forgive one another. They say how often should I forgive, as many as seven times? And Jesus says, seventy times seven. A deep love isn’t easily displaced. A deep love isn’t easily turned aside into anger or even reversed into hatred. And all around us, there’s a world saying that all we need is love.
We need more love in this world. And yet, if the love that we have is only that selfish you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours kind of love. Or if it’s a shallow love that is only able to take small offences and ends up dissolving, well then, that’s not the love the world needs. What the world needs is the love of Jesus Christ. The love of Christ living in us, and thanks be to God that we have the testimony of Jesus’ love in scriptures: That here is one that was able to reach out to people who had nothing to give back to him. He left the glory of heaven in order to reach out to lost and ruined sinners. They weren’t able to give him anything that he didn’t already have. They weren’t able to provide him food. He provided them food. They weren’t able to provide for him health. He gave them healing. And when he continued in his ministry and people turned against him because of their anger and hatred, he continued to love them and even cried from the Cross, father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
Be assured of this, that if you ask Jesus to fill you with his love with a deep selfless love, he is able to do it, and his love is able to endure all things.
Let’s give thanks to God for this good news... Would you pray with me?
Almighty God, thank you that you have invited us to your feast. We have nothing in our hands to bring. We have no gifts to offer. For everything that we have is yours, and yet you have given more and more, even giving your own Son to die for our sins. We thank you almighty God for the blessing of his teaching and of his gift of life, and we pray that you will strengthen us in faith and fill us with his love, so that the world will receive his love that it so desperately needs. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen
Rev. Brian Wilkie
St. Andrew's Christian Community, Rockland, Ontario
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To listen to the above broadcast, click on the following link:
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