Mark Bradford's Bible Blog

The Parable of the Great Banquet

¹⁵When one of those at the table with him heard this, he said to Jesus, “Blessed is the man who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God.”

¹⁶Jesus replied: “A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests. ¹⁷At the time of the banquet he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’

This is a continuation of the conversation in verses 1-14. Jesus was invited to a Sabbath meal at the home of a prominent Pharisee. He had just healed a man with dropsy, and after reprimanding them for their preoccupation with social status, someone is moved to make this statement regarding what was referred to in Judaism as the Messiah’s Banquet. According to the beliefs at the time, when the Messiah came and rescued Israel, there would be a great banquet and celebration. If we keep in mind what Jesus had just said to them regarding their own social practices, that they shouldn’t be so concerned about taking the places of honor at the table, and that they should invite those who could not repay them, this seems like an attempt to steer the conversation away from those uncomfortable topics.

So Jesus replies with this parable of a great banquet, as if to say, “So you want to talk about the great banquet in the kingdom of God? OK, let’s talk about it.” He then proceeds to give them an illustration of how the great banquet in the kingdom of God will be just like he had just told them their banquets should be. In that culture, banquets were large celebrations that were planned well in advance. Invitations were sent out in two stages. the first weeks ahead of time, and the last the day of the event, when everything was ready. After the first round of invitations had been responded to, the food would be prepared for the amount of people who had agreed to come. To turn down an invitation that you had previously agreed to on the day of the banquet was a great insult to the host. The food that had been prepared would not keep in a world without refrigeration. It would go to waste.

¹⁸“But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said, ‘I have just bought a field, and I must go and see it. Please excuse me.’

¹⁹“Another said, ‘I have just bought five yoke of oxen, and I’m on my way to try them out. Please excuse me.’

²⁰“Still another said, ‘I just got married, so I can’t come.’

All of these invitees had previously agreed to come to the banquet, and food had been prepared for them, at great cost to the host. Have you ever thrown a party and had a bunch of people who had RSVP’d call at the last minute to say they couldn’t come? Or worse, just not show up? Throwing a party or a banquet requires a lot of work and costs a lot of money. Though this parable has a much deeper spiritual meaning than this, it can also be taken to mean that if you’re invited to something, and you agree to come, show up!

The excuses given here are all lame, as excuses usually are. The first two are ridiculous. No one would buy a field without looking at it first, and no one would buy oxen without trying them out first. As one commentary I read today said, this is like saying you can’t come to a banquet because you have to try out five cars you just bought sight unseen. The third excuse is worse, because it uses a scriptural principle to make the excuse (Deut. 24:5). Also, this man would have known what his marriage status would be when he accepted the invitation the first time. Plus, the man who invited him would have just attended his wedding, according to the principle Jesus outlined in verse 12. The host of the banquet had shown up for his wedding, but he would not show up for the host’s banquet when he had said he would.

Of course, the spiritual parallel is obvious. God has invited us to his great banquet, and though many of us say we will come, when it comes down to it, we make excuses. We tell God that we’ll come to him after A or B happens. But like the men in this parable, the excuses we make are lame or worse. The real reason the men in the parable turned down the invitation is that they didn’t really want to come. We make excuses to God for the same reason.

²¹“The servant came back and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and ordered his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.’

²²” ‘Sir,’ the servant said, ‘what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.’

²³“Then the master told his servant, ‘Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be full. ²⁴I tell you, not one of those men who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.’ “

Anyone who has thrown a party and had a bunch of people who had agreed to come not show up understands the anger of the host. Do I sound like this has happened to us? It has, but I’m not mad anymore . I wonder if the Pharisees at this table got the message. The original invitees in the parable represented Israel. God’s invitation to his banquet was Jesus himself. He came to the Jews first, but most rejected him. Only after he was rejected by Israel was the invitation extended to the rest of us, the Gentiles. This is where Jesus shows how God invites the undesirables they way he had just told them they should. He invites those who can’t repay him. When we receive an invitation to a party, often we are asked to RSVP by a certain date. This is sort of like the second invitation in the parable. The point is, there is a time limit on our invitation from God. One day, it will be too late to respond, either because we died before accepting God’s invitation, or because we ignored him for so long we became unable to respond. The invitation to attend the Marriage Supper of the Lamb is the greatest honor we can ever receive. Why would we be so crazy or stupid to miss it because of our lame excuses?

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Jesus at a Pharisee’s House

¹One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched. ²There in front of him was a man suffering from dropsy. ³Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in the law, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?” ⁴But they remained silent. So taking hold of the man, he healed him and sent him away.

⁵Then he asked them, “If one of you has a son^[a] or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull him out?” ⁶And they had nothing to say.

Here is a third instance in Luke’s gospel of Jesus healing someone on the Sabbath and challenging the religious leaders on the subject. The other two cases are in 6:1-11, blog, and 13:10-17, blog. Each time he did it, he made the same point. People are more important than rules, and the command to remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy (Exodus 20:8-11) was never meant to keep us from doing good for others. Remember that the next time someone asks you to help them move on a Sunday!

From the passage immediately preceding this chapter and this passage, we can gather that Jesus had friendly relationships with some Pharisees, but he challenged their legalism and pride. None of them would have hesitated to help one of their animals on the Sabbath, but they hesitated to help a person in need. As we see in the next verses, this was a dinner where people of elevated social status were invited, and social ranking was a big deal. That makes me wonder who this man with dropsy was, and why he was there. Since Luke does not say that the Pharisees were angered by the healing in this case, I wonder if the man with dropsy was related to someone, maybe even the host. Perhaps one of the prominent Pharisees made sure this man was there, either to test Jesus, like in 6:1-11, or maybe even hoping Jesus would heal him because he was someone the Pharisee cared about, but he was too proud to ask Jesus to do it, especially on the Sabbath. It’s amazing how our rigid ideology suddenly becomes less important when we or someone we care about needs help.

⁷When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honor at the table, he told them this parable: ⁸“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. ⁹If 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. ¹⁰But 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. ¹¹For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

In that culture, places at a banquet table were determined by social status. Though we don’t have that same custom today, the same principle applies in other areas. In my area of ministry, music, this dynamic is often in play. People want to be in the prominent positions, singing solos and being on the praise team. They want to be in the spotlight, and think they have to be self promoters to get there. What many don’t realize is that those who do get asked to do a lot of solos are those who are consistent, show that they can be counted on, and have an attitude of ministry, not self promotion. Jesus was a perfect example of someone who deserved the highest place, but made himself a servant, and then was given the highest place. (Phil 2:5-11). He is our example, and when we humble ourselves, we are like him.

¹²Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. ¹³But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, ¹⁴and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

Not only did the guests at this dinner seek the places of honor at the table, the Pharisee who hosted it invited his guests based on their social status. As a popular rabbi of the time, This may be why Jesus was invited. He was, in a way, a celebrity. In verse 12, Jesus talks about being repaid like it’s a bad thing! But this is part of his principle of laying up treasures in Heaven (Matthew 6:19-20). Giving to those who can’t repay us is also Christlike. We can never begin to repay Jesus for all he’s done for us, but he keeps on giving. If we want to be like him, we must love the unlovable and give to those who can’t repay us like he did, and continues to do.

Often, when I am at a ministry event, people thank me for the music I’ve produced that they use in their ministries, as if I did them out of charity. I do approach my work as ministry, and I’m grateful that it’s used to further the Kingdom, but I get paid to produce these CD’s. Therefore, based on what Jesus teaches here and elsewhere, I’ve already received my reward. It’s the ministry that I volunteer for, and never expect to be paid for that comes closer to the standard Jesus set. It’s not giving if we expect to be repaid. If we want to be truly Christlike, we must humble ourselves, and give like he gave.

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Jesus’ Sorrow for Jerusalem

³¹At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, “Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.”

³²He replied, “Go tell that fox, ‘I will drive out demons and heal people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.’ ³³In any case, I must keep going today and tomorrow and the next day—for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!

It’s interesting to  me that Jesus was warned by Pharisees about the threat from Herod. It’s ironic, because Pharisees would be very involved in the plot to kill Jesus themselves. Perhaps these Pharisees were supporters of Jesus. Nicodemus was a Pharisee and a believer in Jesus (John 3:1-2). So even though many Pharisees opposed Jesus, not all did. Herod had tried, unsuccessfully, to see Jesus earlier (9:7-9). Now he wanted to kill Jesus. Of course, during his trial, Jesus was sent to Herod, but Herod did not kill Jesus when he had the chance (Luke 23:7-11). Herod Antipas seemed to have a mixture of fascination with Jesus, while feeling threatened by him at the same time. Maybe by this time he had done the math and figured out that Jesus had escaped his father’s attempt to kill the prophesied King of the Jews, and was worried that Jesus might challenge his claim to the throne. In any case, these Pharisees had heard that Herod wanted to kill Jesus, and tried to warn him away from going to Jerusalem. But Jesus would not be distracted from his mission.

When Jesus called Herod a fox, it wasn’t a compliment. The Amplified Bible expands the word fox to say “sly and crafty, skulking and cowardly”. Herod pretended to be king of Israel, but he was really a lackey for Rome. Jesus not only refused to run from Herod, he told the Pharisees to tell Herod that he was going to keep right on doing what he had been doing, healing and casting out demons. There were times in Jesus’ ministry when he escaped death because it was not his time (4:28-30, 8:22-25), but now his time had come, and he walked straight toward it. When he said in verse 32, “on the third day I will reach my goal”, he is talking about the resurrection, the ultimate goal of his mission on earth.

³⁴“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! ³⁵Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’^[b]“

The only record we have in the Old Testament of a prophet being killed in Jerusalem is in 2 Chronicles 24:20-21, where Zechariah was killed in the courtyard of the Temple. Jesus referred to this in Luke 11:51. John the Baptist was also killed in Jerusalem by Herod (Matthew 14:1-10). And Jesus was also looking ahead to his own death outside the walls of Jerusalem. When Jesus speaks of how he has longed to gather Jerusalem together and protect them like a hen would protect her chicks, I don’t think he’s just talking about his time in the flesh. I think he’s speaking from the perspective of God the Father. Jesus and the Father are one, and God the Son, preexisting with the Father, witnessed all the times Israel broke their covenant with God, and his heart broke for them. Any parent who has had a wayward child who they wanted to protect and love, but their son or daughter would not allow it understands this emotion. When a mother hen sees a predator coming, she calls her chicks to her and hides them under her wings. If the chicks will not come, they are much more vulnerable. God still wants to protect us from ourselves, but like wayward children, we sometimes tend to run away and ignore his call. Jesus had just talked about striving to enter the narrow door. The mother hen’s wings and the narrow door are illustrations of the same principle. If we will walk through the narrow door and make our home in the Master’s house, we are protected and loved like the chicks under their mother’s wings.

In verse 35, Jesus predicts the cheers of the crowds in Jerusalem during his Triumphal entry. He knows that they will quote from Psalm 118:26, proclaiming him to be the Messiah. But the authorities in Jerusalem will not accept him as Messiah and Lord. That was also true for John the Baptist. Many of the common people believed in him, but the authorities killed him. Because of their failure to repent and believe, their house was left to them desolate (v. 35). Jerusalem would be destroyed by the Romans less than one generation later.

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The Narrow Door

²²Then Jesus went through the towns and villages, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem. ²³Someone asked him, “Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?”

He said to them, ²⁴“Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. ²⁵Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’
“But he will answer, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’

Jesus is asked a question that many have asked over the centuries. Will many be saved, or only a few? It was a popular topic of discussion among rabbis of Jesus’ time, and the debate still rages today. How can a God of love condemn so many people to eternal punishment? These are questions that people smarter than me have debated for millennia, and only God really knows the answer. Jesus did not answer the question directly, he turned the question back on the questioner. In verse 24, he seems to be saying, “Don’t worry about how many will be saved, just make sure you are saved.” He says to make every effort to enter through the narrow door. The phrase make every effort in the NIV is translated work hard in the NLB and strive in the NKJ and Amplified. The Amplified Bible adds “force yourselves through it” in brackets. The point is not to take our salvation casually.

Many Jews of Jesus’ time thought they would be saved just because they were children of Abraham. Some today think they are saved because they went to Sunday School as a kid, or they “live a good life”. Jesus is not preaching salvation by works, but he is telling us not to assume we are saved, but to make every effort to enter through the narrow door. What’s the narrow door? Jesus himself is the narrow door. We can do good works all we want, but we can only enter into salvation through him.

According to verse 25, we only have a limited time to enter the narrow door. At some point, the door will be closed. Many take this to mean that we must be saved before we die, but for many of us, the door closes long before that. It’s not that God closes the door on us, it’s that we close the door on him. We walk by the open door, ignoring it for so long that we eventually forget it’s there. Our hearts become hard to the point that we can no longer see the open door. That makes it doubly important to strive, work hard, and make every effort to accept the invitation of Jesus to enter his house while we can.

²⁶“Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’

²⁷“But he will reply, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!’

²⁸“There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out. ²⁹People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. ³⁰Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last.”

Those who are unable to get in because they waited too long object in verse 26 that they “hung around” with Jesus, so they should be let in. Lots of people go to church and “hang around” with Jesus. They have lots of excuses for why they never get serious about their faith. The answer the master of the house gives is that he doesn’t know them or where they come from. He doesn’t know them because they never made an effort to get to know him. How much of an effort do we make to get to know God? We get to know God by spending time with him in Bible study, worship and prayer, and by obeying him.

Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.” John 14:21 (NIV)

To me that’s what making every effort to enter through the narrow door means. It means taking my relationship with God seriously enough to get to know him and obey him. If we obey him, we show that we love him, and he will show himself to us. If I never make the effort to really know God, I will be one of the ones trying to get in at the last minute when the door is closing. If I don’t really know him, will he say of me that he doesn’t know me, or where I come from? the Amplified Bible puts verse 27 like this:

²⁷But He will say, I tell you, I do not know where [^[n]what household–certainly not Mine] you come from; depart from Me, all you wrongdoers!

It’s not that God will not recognize us, as though he’s never seen us before. but if we don’t make every effort to enter the narrow door early, it means we didn’t really care if we were part of his household or not. When the door is finally shut, we will never have been part of his household. How can we be part of his household if we waited until the last minute to walk through his door?

In verses 28-30, it seems to me that Jesus is talking primarily to his Jewish audience. They believed that because of their heritage, they would be first in the kingdom of God. But many Gentiles would come from all parts of the globe to take their places at the master’s table, while many who believed it was their birthright to be first would actually be last. There are many today who believe they will be saved because of their upbringing. But no one enters the narrow door by birthright. Only those who make every effort to enter will be part of the Master’s household.

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The Parables of the Mustard Seed and the Yeast

¹⁸Then Jesus asked, “What is the kingdom of God like? What shall I compare it to? ¹⁹It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air perched in its branches.”

²⁰Again he asked, “What shall I compare the kingdom of God to? ²¹It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount^[a] of flour until it worked all through the dough.”

The parable of the mustard seed also appears in Matthew 13:31-32 and Mark 4:30-32. See my post on Mark’s version here. There is a lot of debate about the meaning of this parable, especially since it’s coupled with the parable of the yeast. Google “parable of the mustard seed”, and you’ll see what I mean. Some, like David Guzik, say these are negative parables about corruption in the church. The mustard plant was not a desired plant in that area in Jesus’ time. It was a controlled weed. You’ weren’t supposed to let it get as big as a tree. If they got that big, they were considered out of control. Also, birds represent the devil in the parable of the sower. So some say Jesus added birds to the parable to give it an added negative connotation.

The fact that Jesus combined the parable of the mustard seed with the parable of the yeast is further proof for some that Jesus is talking about corruption. Yeast, or leaven, has a negative meaning in much of Jesus’ teachings (Matt 16:11 Mark 8:15, blog Luke 12:1, blog). It represented pride in Jewish culture in Biblical times because of the way it “puffs up” bread. So some think that Jesus is giving warnings about corruption in his kingdom with these two parables. I have a hard time with these negative interpretations, however. The more “standard” view of these parables is that Jesus is illustrating the explosive growth of the church which was soon to come. Out of this tiny group of believers that surrounded Jesus would come the Church Triumphant. In comparison to the mighty Roman Empire at that time, this little group of disciples must have seemed insignificant. But after Pentecost, this group would literally change the world.

I prefer the more positive interpretation of these parables, though the other argument has merit. If Jesus was warning against corruption in the church, why did he start by saying that this is what the kingdom of God is like? He wasn’t talking about human bureaucracy, he was talking about the kingdom of God. And birds don’t always have a negative connotation in Jesus’ teachings. In Luke 12:6,  not one sparrow is forgotten by God. And in 12:24, the ravens don’t sow or reap, but God feeds them. While it’s true that the parable of the yeast would be the only positive reference to yeast in Jesus’ teachings, if Jesus meant it that way, I say again that if Jesus had meant this parable as a negative, he would not have started it by saying, “What shall I compare the kingdom of God to? It is like yeast”. Why would Jesus say that the kingdom of God is like something bad? His whole message was about proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. If the kingdom of God is like something bad, it’s not good news, is it?

I think Jesus was encouraging his disciples with these two parables. It’s true that yeast, birds, and mustard plants had negative associations in Jesus’ time. But soon, so would the early church. They were not admired, they were persecuted. The mustard plant, as a weed, was considered a nuisance, and so would the early church be. But like the spread of a weed, the growth of the church could not be controlled by man. Likewise, as a woman of Jesus’ time would take a pinch of leavened bread and mix it in with a new loaf to make it rise, God would take single witnesses and little groups, and place them all around the region, and as a result, the church would rise. I think Jesus may have been saying that though society may not view them positively, God was using them to grow his kingdom. And he uses us the same way, if we’ll let him.

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A Crippled Woman Healed on the Sabbath

¹⁰On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, ¹¹and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. ¹²When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” ¹³Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God.

¹⁴Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue ruler said to the people, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.”

This is the second instance of Jesus healing someone in the synagogue on the Sabbath in Luke’s gospel. The other is in 6:1-11. See my post on that passage here. When Jesus healed the man with the shriveled hand in chapter 6, he simply told the man to stretch out his hand. But this time, he told the woman she was free, and then he put his hands on her and she was healed. A word and a touch from Jesus is all we need to set us free from anything that binds us.

Surely Jesus knew the reaction this would cause. But the synagogue leader did not reprimand Jesus for healing the woman, he reprimanded the woman for coming to be healed (v. 14). Perhaps this woman sat in a more prominent seat than she was supposed to, hoping Jesus would see and heal her. Maybe this infirmity kept her from coming to the synagogue on most Sabbath days, but when she heard Jesus was going to be there, she made a special trip, hoping to be healed. How much trouble are we willing to go to to meet with Jesus? Do we come to him with hope and expectation that he will free us?

What Jesus had just done could not be considered work by any reasonable definition, but there were all kinds of unreasonable, man-made rules about what constituted work on the Sabbath in Jesus’ day. Jesus makes the same point here that he made in chapter 6, that God’s commandment concerning keeping the Sabbath was never intended to keep us from doing good for others.

¹⁵The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? ¹⁶Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?”

¹⁷When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing.

The synagogue ruler, like many of his day, was more concerned with rules than people. It was more important to him to keep the rules than to help this woman. It’s easy to get so comfortable with the way we “do church” that we lose sight of the needs all around us. Right now my church is going through the process of adding a second service, and it seems everybody has their own ideas of what that service should look like. Some people are upset that it’s not shaping up like they think it should. I have been guilty of that myself. What upsets us, little things that don’t matter much in the light of eternity, or the needs of people right in front of us? Are we like the synagogue leader, critical when things don’t happen the way we think they should, or like the people in verse 17 who were delighted with what Jesus was doing, even if the methods used aren’t what we’re used to?

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A Call to Repentance

¹ About this time Jesus was informed that Pilate had murdered some people from Galilee as they were offering sacrifices at the Temple. ² “Do you think those Galileans were worse sinners than all the other people from Galilee?” Jesus asked. “Is that why they suffered? ³ Not at all! And you will perish, too, unless you repent of your sins and turn to God. ⁴ And what about the eighteen people who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them? Were they the worst sinners in Jerusalem? ⁵ No, and I tell you again that unless you repent, you will perish, too.” (NLB)

Jesus talks here about two tragedies that had happened recently. Apparently the murder of these Galileans had just happened, and someone told Jesus about it. Since Jesus was a Galilean on his way to Jerusalem, it’s easy to see why people would want him to know about this and would want his reaction to it. We don’t have any records in secular history of this tragedy, and this is the only place in the gospels where it’s mentioned. The scholarship I’ve seen thinks that some Galileans were making their sacrifices in the Temple, and Pilate sent soldiers in and slaughtered them in the Temple courts, during their act of worship. In the NIV and Amplified Bible, what the NLB translates “Pilate had murdered some people from Galilee as they were offering sacrifices” is translated, “the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices”. That’s why scholars think they were murdered while their sacrifices were being made, because their blood was “mixed” with the blood of their sacrifices. This would have been a terrible outrage to Jews of that time. But rather than rail against Pilate for this crime, Jesus used that tragedy and another, the fall of the Tower of Siloam which killed 18 people, to illustrate the importance of repentance.

In that culture, the popular view was that if something bad happened to you, it meant you were especially guilty, and the tragedy was God’s judgment on you. Sadly, some still think that way today. The age-old question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” still haunts many. We’d still like to think that the wicked should suffer, but the innocent should not. But Jesus didn’t say the people killed were innocent, he said they were not worse sinners than anyone else. We are all guilty. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). The people Jesus was talking to probably felt that those who had died tragically must have been more guilty than they because of what had happened to them. Some today may feel the same way toward a gay AIDS victim, or a guy whose meth lab blows up and kills him. But those people are no worse sinners than any of us, and if we don’t repent, our fate will be the same as theirs.

The Amplified Bible translates the word repent in verses 3 and 5, “change your mind for the better and heartily amend your ways, with abhorrence of your past sins”. Is that our definition of repentance? Do we go that far in changing our ways? David Guzik, in his commentary on this chapter, says that the tense for the Greek word for repent is different in verse 3 than it is in verse 5. In verse 5, it’s a “once and for all” repentance, and in verse 3, it’s a continuous repentance. Both are necessary for following Jesus. We must repent when we first accept Jesus as our Savior, but then, as we grow in him, we continue to repent in areas of our life that God is not pleased with. Repentance is both a crisis event and a process.

Parable of the Barren Fig Tree

⁶ Then Jesus told this story: “A man planted a fig tree in his garden and came again and again to see if there was any fruit on it, but he was always disappointed. ⁷ Finally, he said to his gardener, ‘I’ve waited three years, and there hasn’t been a single fig! Cut it down. It’s just taking up space in the garden.’

⁸ “The gardener answered, ‘Sir, give it one more chance. Leave it another year, and I’ll give it special attention and plenty of fertilizer. ⁹ If we get figs next year, fine. If not, then you can cut it down.’”

After warning them about repentance, Jesus uses this parable to talk about God’s patience and judgment. One thing I’m not sure about in this parable is who the man who planted the tree is supposed to represent, and who the farmer is supposed to represent. Do they both represent God? God is the one who “plants” us, and God is the one who looks for fruit in our lives. But God is also the one who cares for us and nurtures us to try to get us to produce good fruit. Perhaps the man who planted the tree represents the judgment of God, and the farmer represents the patience and mercy of God.

So what does “fruit” mean? Jesus told another parable about a tree and its fruit in 6:43-45. See my post on that passage here. In that parable, Jesus seems to be saying that our words and actions show what’s in our heart. Galatians 5:22-23 tells us what the fruit of the Spirit is. Certainly love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control are evidence of Jesus living in us and through us. If our lives show those characteristics, God will be pleased with the fruit that our lives produce. But there’s one other aspect of fruit. Fruit is how some trees reproduce. If left unattended, a fruit tree will drop its fruit in the fall, and the rotting fruit on the ground fertilizes the seeds, producing more fruit trees. If our lives are really producing good fruit, the kind that God wants, we will be reproducing ourselves as Christians. That’s also the kind of fruit God is looking for from us. He wants to see more people coming to Jesus because of us.

But God’s patience is not infinite. In the parable, the farmer gets one more year to try to nurture the tree so it will produce fruit. In the context that Jesus was speaking, I think his immediate message was to Israel. Jesus’ presence with them in the flesh was the “one more year” they were getting to repent. They actually had almost a full generation of witnesses preaching about his resurrection to repent and believe before the “tree” was cut down when Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 AD. God’s patience is also not infinite with the church today. If our lives individually, and the church collectively, do not produce the kind of fruit that God planted us for, our fate will be no better than Jerusalem’s was in the first century.

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Interpreting the Times

⁵⁴He said to the crowd: “When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, ‘It’s going to rain,’ and it does. ⁵⁵And when the south wind blows, you say, ‘It’s going to be hot,’ and it is. ⁵⁶Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time?

A few verses earlier, Jesus had been warning his disciples to be watchful, dressed and ready for his return. Now he turns to the crowd and asks why they can’t interpret the times they are living in. It wasn’t that they weren’t expecting the Messiah to come. They all were. Yeshua was the most common name given to Jewish boys of that era, because every mother hoped her son would grow up to be the Messiah. Yet the true Messiah was standing right in front of them, and they didn’t recognize him. They knew the prophecies, but had completely misinterpreted them. They expected a political Messiah to free them from the Romans, rather than one who would be the ultimate sacrifice for their sin. This passage is often quoted by those who believe they know the scenario by which Jesus will return. But the current popular belief about the second coming of Jesus, the whole Hal Lindsey/Left Behind scenario, could well be just as wrong as the popular belief was about his first coming.

One of the beliefs about the second coming that is seemingly accepted by everyone is the belief that the Temple must be rebuilt on the Dome of the Rock before Jesus returns. But that belief is dangerous, because people might well see that the Temple has not yet been rebuilt, so that means Jesus can’t return yet. So why repent now, when they haven’t even begun tearing down the mosque that sits there now? All of those who are so sure that they know what will happen and how would do well to heed Jesus’ warning this this crowd, who also were sure they knew what the Messiah would do when he came the first time.

⁵⁷“Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right? ⁵⁸As you are going with your adversary to the magistrate, try hard to be reconciled to him on the way, or he may drag you off to the judge, and the judge turn you over to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison. ⁵⁹I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.^[c]“

Did Jesus call the crowd hypocrites because they misunderstood the prophecies? I don’t think so. He called them hypocrites because they were not making every effort to reconcile themselves to God. Like a person who owed someone money in that culture would try to negotiate with their creditor to stay out of debtor’s prison, Jesus is urging them to make every effort to reconcile themselves to God before it’s too late. None of us knows how much time we have. Jesus may return in our lifetime, or he may not. I may live a long life or be hit by a bus tomorrow. But we are to make every effort to be reconciled to him, and to be dressed and ready and about the tasks he has given us to do. Then we will prove ourselves good and faithful servants, and no matter what happens, we will be ready to meet him.

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Jesus Causes Division

⁴⁹ “I have come to set the world on fire, and I wish it were already burning! ⁵⁰ I have a terrible baptism of suffering ahead of me, and I am under a heavy burden until it is accomplished. (NLB)

Jesus had his mind fixed on the task ahead of him. The fire he speaks of in verse 49 must be the tongues of fire at Pentecost (Acts 2:1-3). Jesus knew that after Pentecost, the Gospel would spread like wildfire across the Roman Empire, and eventually reach around the globe to everyone. He was anxious to get that fire started, but first he had to go through his baptism of suffering. Because of his baptism of suffering, we can be baptized with the Holy Spirit. Because of his baptism of suffering, his purifying fires can cleanse us from every impurity. Jesus did not come to make us comfortable, he came to set the world on fire.

⁵¹ Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I have come to divide people against each other! ⁵² From now on families will be split apart, three in favor of me, and two against—or two in favor and three against.

⁵³ ‘Father will be divided against son
and son against father;
mother against daughter
and daughter against mother;
and mother-in-law against daughter-in-law
and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.’^[e]” (NLB)

Jesus is prophesying that families would be divided over him. This was certainly true of the early church, and it’s still true today. If you are the only Christian in your family, hopefully your family is tolerant of your faith and open to your witness. But in the first century AD, when the church was being persecuted, families would turn Christian family members in to the authorities to be imprisoned for their faith. Doubtless this still goes on in some parts of the world.

Jesus gave his disciples other warnings similar to this in Matthew 10:21, 35-36 and Mark 13:12-13. See my post on Mark 13:12-13 here. Salvation is free, but following Jesus will cost us something. Jesus wants us to count the cost and make sure we are willing to face whatever rejection we may come up against when we profess to belong to him (Luke 14:27-30). By talking about these things here, Jesus is warning his disciples of the persecutions to come. Jesus would soon suffer, and so would his disciples. But as a result of their willingness to endure it all for the sake of the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ set the world on fire. Are we willing to endure the same kind of suffering in order to see the world ablaze for him?

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Watchfulness

³⁵“Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, ³⁶like men waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him. ³⁷It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. I tell you the truth, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them. ³⁸It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the second or third watch of the night. ³⁹But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. ⁴⁰You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.”

Jesus now turns to the subject of readiness for his return, which seems like an abrupt change of subject at first glance, but it’s not. Jesus had been talking about greed and worry. If we worry or are greedy, we focus on the wrong things. If we seek his kingdom and his righteousness, we focus on the right things. Jesus now illustrates what it means to seek his kingdom. These illustrations show what will happen with servants who seek his kingdom by being ready and about their master’s business, and what will happen with those who don’t. Remember that Jesus is not talking about those who are not servants at all, those who are outside the master’s house. He’s talking about his servants, those who are already pledged to serve him. Believers, in other words.

Jewish weddings of that time were often at night, and if the master of a house went to a wedding, there would be no telling when he would return. There were no electric lights then, so the master depended on his servants to keep the lamps burning so he could see when he came home. If all the servants went to bed, and weren’t dressed and ready for his return, they weren’t doing their job. Jesus has entrusted us, his servants, to keep his light burning, and to be about his business, dressed and ready. Readiness doesn’t just mean waiting by the door doing nothing. It means doing the work that he has entrusted to us. That’s seeking his kingdom and his righteousness. If we do that, we will be ready to meet our master, whether at his return or at the time of our death. Not only will we partake at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, but Jesus himself will serve us the way he served his disciples at the Last Supper (John 13:1-16).

⁴¹Peter asked, “Lord, are you telling this parable to us, or to everyone?”

⁴²The Lord answered, “Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom the master puts in charge of his servants to give them their food allowance at the proper time? ⁴³It will be good for that servant whom the master finds doing so when he returns. ⁴⁴I tell you the truth, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. ⁴⁵But suppose the servant says to himself, ‘My master is taking a long time in coming,’ and he then begins to beat the menservants and maidservants and to eat and drink and get drunk. ⁴⁶The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers.

⁴⁷“That servant who knows his master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what his master wants will be beaten with many blows. ⁴⁸But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.

In the first paragraph, Jesus talks about faithful servants who are doing their job, and what their reward will be. Now he talks about what will happen to unfaithful servants. Again, he is not talking about unbelievers, but his own servants. Peter asks him if he is talking just to his disciples, or to everyone. Jesus replies by talking about managers, which indicates that he’s not only talking about his servants, or disciples, but managers, those who minister to believers. Who was Jesus hardest on during his ministry? The religious leaders, those who presume to teach others. Perhaps there were some Pharisees and scribes in the crowd, but Jesus wasn’t really talking to the crowd here. He was talking to his disciples, and holding them to the same standard that he held the leaders of Judaism to. If those who are in positions of spiritual authority don’t take their responsibility seriously, or worse, abuse their position of authority like the unfaithful manager, their punishment will be more severe than it will be for servants with less authority. Ask any former pastor or Christian leader who has lost his ministry due to scandal if he feels he has been beaten with many blows. And if he is called Home while the abuses are still taking place like in verse 46, he will be assigned a place with unbelievers, and his hell will be worse than it will be for those who never believed.

Then Jesus concludes this lesson by talking about two groups; those who have been given much (servants), and those who have been entrusted with much (managers). Those of us who have accepted Jesus as our Savior and serve him (not to mention those of us who have been blessed with a godly upbringing and have spent our lives in the church) have been given much, so much is demanded of us. If we don’t keep the light of Jesus burning, who will? If we aren’t dressed and ready for his return, how can we tell others to be? And those who have been called to ministry have been entrusted with much, and much more will be asked of us. If you’re in ministry, you know how true that is! The more we show ourselves to be faithful servants and managers, the more God asks of us. But we have to be careful not to get lazy, or feel entitled to be served ourselves. Whatever authority we have comes from him, and we ourselves are under authority. It’s not our church, it’s his church, and one day he will call his church home. Therefore let us make sure we are faithful servants and faithful managers of his church.

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