In Luke 14:15-24, we are challenged to ask: How long can we reject the call to come into the kingdom of God?
If we keep resisting, we will be left out of numerous blessings, like a brand new life in the eternal kingdom.
Before we begin the exegesis …..
Quick definition of a parable:
Literally, the word parable (parabolē in Greek) combines para– (pronounced pah-rah) and means “alongside” and bolē (pronounced boh-lay) which means “put” or even “throw”). Therefore, a parable puts two or more images or ideas alongside each other to produce a new truth. […] The Shorter Lexicon says that the Greek word parabolē can sometimes be translated as “symbol,” “type,” “figure,” and “illustration,” the latter term being virtually synonymous with parable.
For more information on what a parable is and its purposes, click on this link:
The translation is mine. If you would like to see other translations, click here:
If you don’t read Greek, ignore the left column.
I often quote scholars in print because I learn many things from them. They form a community of teachers I respect (1 Cor. 12:28), though I don’t agree with everything they write. But they do ensure I do not go astray. There is safety in numbers (for me at least).
Now let’s begin.
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Parable of the Great Banquet (Luke 14:15-24) |
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| 15 Ἀκούσας δέ τις τῶν συνανακειμένων ταῦτα εἶπεν αὐτῷ· μακάριος ὅστις φάγεται ἄρτον ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τοῦ θεοῦ. 16 Ὁ δὲ εἶπεν αὐτῷ· ἄνθρωπός τις ἐποίει δεῖπνον μέγα, καὶ ἐκάλεσεν πολλοὺς 17 καὶ ἀπέστειλεν τὸν δοῦλον αὐτοῦ τῇ ὥρᾳ τοῦ δείπνου εἰπεῖν τοῖς κεκλημένοις· ἔρχεσθε, ὅτι ἤδη ἕτοιμά ἐστιν. 18 καὶ ἤρξαντο ἀπὸ μιᾶς πάντες παραιτεῖσθαι. ὁ πρῶτος εἶπεν αὐτῷ· ἀγρὸν ἠγόρασα καὶ ἔχω ἀνάγκην ἐξελθὼν ἰδεῖν αὐτόν· ἐρωτῶ σε, ἔχε με παρῃτημένον. 19 καὶ ἕτερος εἶπεν· ζεύγη βοῶν ἠγόρασα πέντε καὶ πορεύομαι δοκιμάσαι αὐτά· ἐρωτῶ σε, ἔχε με παρῃτημένον. 20 καὶ ἕτερος εἶπεν· γυναῖκα ἔγημα καὶ διὰ τοῦτο οὐ δύναμαι ἐλθεῖν.
21 καὶ παραγενόμενος ὁ δοῦλος ἀπήγγειλεν τῷ κυρίῳ αὐτοῦ ταῦτα. τότε ὀργισθεὶς ὁ οἰκοδεσπότης εἶπεν τῷ δούλῳ αὐτοῦ· ἔξελθε ταχέως εἰς τὰς πλατείας καὶ ῥύμας τῆς πόλεως καὶ τοὺς πτωχοὺς καὶ ἀναπείρους καὶ τυφλοὺς καὶ χωλοὺς εἰσάγαγε ὧδε. 22 καὶ εἶπεν ὁ δοῦλος· κύριε, γέγονεν ὃ ἐπέταξας, καὶ ἔτι τόπος ἐστίν. 23 καὶ εἶπεν ὁ κύριος πρὸς τὸν δοῦλον· ἔξελθε εἰς τὰς ὁδοὺς καὶ φραγμοὺς καὶ ἀνάγκασον εἰσελθεῖν, ἵνα γεμισθῇ μου ὁ οἶκος· 24 λέγω γὰρ ὑμῖν ὅτι οὐδεὶς τῶν ἀνδρῶν ἐκείνων τῶν κεκλημένων γεύσεταί μου τοῦ δείπνου. |
15 Someone of the dinner guests heard these things and said to him, “Blessed is the one who eats bread in the kingdom of God!” 16 But he said to him, “A certain man spread out a big banquet and invited many people 17 and sent out his servant at the time of the banquet to tell those who had been invited, ‘Come because it is already prepared!’ 18 And everyone began, each one, to decline. The first one said to him, ‘I bought a field, and I am required to go out and see it. I ask you to accept my excuse.’ 19 And another one said, ‘I bought five yokes of oxen and I am going to examine them. I ask you to accept my excuses.’ 20 And another one said, ‘I married a woman and therefore I can’t come.’
21 And the servant arrived and reported these things to his master. Then the householder got angry and said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly to the streets and alleys of the town and bring here the poor, the crippled, and blind and the lame!’ 22 And the servant said, ‘Master, what you have ordered has been done, and there is still room.’ 23 The master said to the servant, ‘Go out into the roads and hedges and compel them to come in, so that my house is filled up!’ 24 I say to you that no one of those invited men will taste my banquet!” |
This parable has a larger context. Please click here to read about it.
We are still at the dinner provided by the Pharisee and his friends—other religious leaders.
This parable is about reaching farther and farther out from the banquet in the house. Those who were invited first were the Chosen People. The second group are the unclean and degraded—the expendables—who were popularly considered rejects. Those invited last are the Gentiles, while the Chosen People would in turn be rejected as a nation because they had rejected their true Messiah. Judaism, expressed in Jerusalem temple worship, is about to be subjected to judgment (Luke 19:41-45; 21:20-24; 23:26-31; Matt. 21:33-45), though numerous individual priests (Acts 6:7) and thousands of Jews of Jerusalem and Judea converted (Acts 2:41; 4:4; Acts 21:20). God loves people, but he is not enamored with systems. Therefore one should not see the Jews as completely excluded, because Jesus said to reach them first (Acts 1:8). We must preach Jesus the Messiah to them.
Morris in his introduction to this parable: “This story of a banquet emphasizes the truth that people are saved by responding to God’s invitation, not by their own effort, whereas if they are lost it is by their own fault. It is tragically possible to refuse the gracious invitation” (p. 250). (Also see his comments on vv. 22-23.)
Now let’s interpret the parable verse by verse.
15:
The man who blurted out the blessing is right. It is good to eat bread, if he meant spiritual bread, in the kingdom of God. Jesus said he is the bread of life (John 6:35-40).
“kingdom of God”: The man who asked the question did not understand it. But let’s explore what it means. As noted in other verses that mention the kingdom in this commentary, the kingdom is God’s power, authority, rule, reign and sovereignty. He exerts all those things over all the universe but more specifically over the lives of people. It is his invisible realm, and throughout the Gospels Jesus is explaining and demonstrating what it looks like before their very eyes and ears. It is gradually being manifested from the realm of faith to the visible realm, but it is not political in the human sense. It is a secret kingdom because it does not enter humanity with trumpets blaring and full power and glory. This grand display will happen when Jesus comes back. In his first coming, it woos people to surrender to it. We can enter God’s kingdom by being born again (John 3:3, 5), by repenting (Matt. 4:17; Mark 1:5), by having the faith of children (Matt. 18:4; Mark 10:14-15), by being transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the Son whom God loves (Col. 1:13), and by seeing their own poverty and need for the kingdom (Matt. 5:3; Luke 6:20; Jas. 2:5).
It also includes the Great Reversal in Luke 1:51-53, where Mary said that Jesus and his kingdom were bringing to the world. The powerful and people of high status are brought low, while the humble and those of low status are raised up. It also fulfills the reversal in 2:34, where Simeon prophesied that Jesus was appointed for the rising and falling of many. It is the right-side-up kingdom, but upside-down from a worldly perspective.
Here it is the already and not-yet. The kingdom has already come in part at his First Coming, but not yet with full manifestation and glory and power until his Second Coming.
5 The Kingdom of God: Already Here, But Not Yet Fully
Bible Basics about the Kingdom of God
Questions and Answers about Kingdom of God
Basic Definition of Kingdom of God
1 Introducing the Kingdom of God (begin a ten-part series)
16-17:
Luke says “a certain man,” while Matthew has a “king” who hosted a wedding banquet for his son (22:1). In Luke’s version, who is the certain man and who is the servant? If God is the head of household (v. 21), then Jesus and the apostles and other messengers are the servant, rolled into one. If Jesus is the head of household, then his servant are his apostles and other messengers, rolled into one. What is the banquet? It is salvation in the kingdom of God, or the kingdom and salvation found within it. Either one works equally well.
18-20:
“each one”: it is probably an Aramaic idiom meaning “all at once,” or more likely it means of “one consent” or “unanimously” (Bock, vol. 2, p. 1273).
The first excuse: In some land deals, a man could go out and inspect the field after he had bought it, but usually the inspection was done before the deal was finalized. So this excuse may not be legitimate.
“required”: it is the key noun anagkē (pronounced ah-nahg-kay), which appears in v. 23 in the command verb form. It could be translated here as “I must” or “I’m compelled” or “it is necessary for me.”
The second excuse: a man bought five yokes of oxen—ten oxen. (A yoke means a pair.) This indicates his wealth. He owned a lot of land. But he could have stopped by to enjoy the banquet, so his excuse was flimsy.
The third excuse: a man just married a woman, as it literally says in Greek, but it could be translated as “wife.” Note that Jesus said that the third invitee just married a woman, not a man. This detail may seem small and irrelevant, but in today’s world people believe Jesus was silent about the same-sex commitment ceremony, commonly called “same-sex marriage.” (Also see Matt. 19:5-6, where Jesus endorsed the Edenic model of one man and one woman). But here he assumed that the man married a woman. When Jesus seems silent on an issue, it is best to go towards the default setting for relationships and moral law: the Torah.
21:
These classes of people were excluded from full service in the Israelite theocracy. These may not approach the altar of God to offer bread. See Lev. 21:16-23, quoted under v. 13,
Rules for Priests in Leviticus 21-22 from a NT Perspective
Jesus is overturning these old rules (HT: Garland, comments on 14:21)
Then the servant came back and reported the excuses. The householder’s (the head of household’s or the original inviter’s) response indicates judgment. The wrath of God does not occur apart from judgment. Picture an old English judge wearing his wig. Do not picture a man who flies off the handle and abuses his wife, for example.
God’s wrath is judicial.
It is not like this:
(Source)
But like this:
(Source)
That is a picture of God in judgment.
The Wrath of God in the New Testament
Do I Really Know God? He Shows Wrath
The Wrath of God in the Old Testament
Everyone Shall Be Judged by Their Works and Words
Bible Basics about the Final Judgment
In fact, Matthew’s version depicts the king sending out an army to slay the refusers, because they had mistreated and killed the messengers (22:7). In Luke’s version the “certain man” did not have the authority to send out an army, yet his wrath does express judgment. Jesus had already pronounced judgment on his generation for all the deaths of God’s prophets, from Abel to Zechariah (Luke 12:49-51). Then when the Pharisees tried to scare him off by invoking Herod’s name, he said, ironically, it is not possible that a prophet would die outside the super-holy (so to speak) city of Jerusalem! Therefore he would complete his mission and die there (Luke 13:33-34)!
Then the householder told the servant to invite society’s rejects. In Lev. 21:17-23, the maim could not serve in the temple. No doubt this class of rejects played on the imagination of people that the lame and maimed and all other disabled were unacceptable to God who may have judged them and punished them by making them disabled. Of course, Jesus is overturning this popular misconception. This is another expression of the Great Reversal, revealed in Luke 1:51-53, where Mary sang that Jesus and his kingdom would exalt the poor and humble, while the rich and powerful would be demoted. In Luke 2:34, which says Simeon predicted that Jesus would cause the falling and rising of many, and in this case bad ideas must fall, and better ones must rise. He is reversing expectations, when he says that the servant must invite the rejects.
“servant” see v. 17 for more comments.
The change in plans must happen quickly, which suggests that the table is already open for visitors. “Jesus’ current kingdom offer is in view here, an offer that culminates on the meal of God’s blessing (14:24). Jesus does not postpone the banquet or withdraw the meal. He gets a new audience. The time of blessing is now and continues into the future … One can accept or reject the invitation, but in this case, the party is coming and it will not be rescheduled or postponed” (Bock, p. 1275).
22:
The servant informed the householder that this call to the rejects had already been done. So there is compressed time from v. 21 to v. 22. It is the storyteller’s privilege to compress time as he wishes. In any case, after this call, there is still room or places unoccupied at the banquet. “To ‘make them come in’ is not compulsion but ‘insistent hospitality’” (Liefeld and Pao, comment on 22-23, quoting partly from another commentator named Manson).
23:
Then the head of household ordered the servant to the paths and hedges, where the poor often congregated, and compel them to come in. So what does compulsion mean here? It does not mean dragging them in because would the poor need to be dragged to a great feast? When I have offered food to the homeless, they eagerly take it. So it cannot mean dragging. Rather compulsion here means first informing them that a feast is open to them and strongly urging and persuading them that the invitation really is open to them. Why would they need this urging and persuading? They probably had disbelief when they heard about the feast, because it was originally for the Chosen People. Now it is open the Gentiles. Really? Nonetheless, some may have run towards the banquet (= kingdom of God and salvation), but others may have hesitated. Is this some kind of prank? When I get to the door, will it be slammed shut in my face and then insiders laugh through the door? But it was or is no prank. The offer has been going out for the past 2000 years.
“compel”: the verb is anagkazō (pronounced ah-nahg-kah-zoh), and BDAG, considered the authoritative Greek lexicon of the NT, says it means, depending on the context: (1) “to compel someone to act in a particular manner, compel, force”; (2) “strongly urge / invite, urge upon, press.” This verb is a virtual synonym to another passage, which baffles scholars: Luke 16:16 says, “everyone is powerfully compelled [biazō] into it.” It is best to see both verbs as rhetorical hyperbole (strategic exaggeration to make a point; cf. Luke 6:41-42).
In the parable, the master is God or Jesus, while the servant is the proclaimer of the kingdom. The kingdom is very compelling. It draws people in, even when they have strong wills. Yes, everyone has free will, but powerful preaching and signs and wonders lowers the will’s resistance, until they themselves choose to come, after they are drawn to enter the kingdom by Spirit-filled preaching of the kingdom, backed up by signs and wonders that bless people, the kinds of signs and wonders that Jesus and his disciples performed. That is the overall context of Luke-Acts, which is a very charismatic double work.
Morris:
There is little doubt that we should see a reference to the mission of the church. God’s invitation had gone out to the people through the prophets. Now in Jesus the second invitation was given. When the religious elite refused it, the church was to bring in both those within the city (the Jews) and those outside (the Gentiles). The slave is not said to have fulfilled the commission to those outside. Bringing in the Gentiles was still future when Jesus spoke, and for that matter for the most part when Luke wrote. (comments on vv. 22-23).
24:
“I tell you”: the “you” here is in the plural, so Jesus is now addressing the people at the Pharisee’s feast (v. 1).
Here is the punchline of the parable. As a nation, the invitation is about to be closed to that generation of Israelites, because they rejected their Messiah, though, as noted, thousands of individual Jews in Jerusalem and Judea accepted the Messiah after the resurrection and outpouring of the Spirit (see comments at the beginning of this section).
Once again, God loves people, but he is not enamored with religious systems, particularly when they oppress and hinder people from coming into the kingdom of God. It was time to judge and reject the old Levitical system and usher in the New Covenant (Jer. 31:31-34; Heb. 8:8-13).
GrowApp for Luke 14:15-24
A.. Which excuses did you offer before you entered salvation in God’s kingdom? How did you overcome them?
B.. Each one of us is disabled inwardly in one way or another. How does God’s invitation to you show his love for you?
C.. How has God’s kingdom salvation begun to heal your inner disability?
SOURCES
At this link you will find the bibliography at the very bottom.
Dr. Jim's Essential Bible Teaching 