Transcript
In your Bibles this morning will you turn to the Gospel of Luke chapter 14 and verse 1. Luke chapter 14 and verse 1. The Gospel of Luke chapter 14. And we want to begin reading at verse 1:
Now it happened, as He went into the house of one of the rulers of the Pharisees to eat bread on the Sabbath, that they watched Him closely. And behold, there was a certain man before Him who had dropsy. And Jesus answering spoke to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, ‘Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?’ But they kept silent. And He took him and healed him, and let him go. Then He answered them, saying, ‘Which of you, having a donkey or an ox that has fallen into a pit, will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?’ And they could not answer Him regarding these things.
He told a parable to those who were invited when He noted how they chose the best places, saying to them, “When you are invited by anyone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in the best place, lest one more honorable than you be invited by him. And he who invited you and him come and say to you, ‘Give place to this man,’ and then you begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down in the lowest place, so that when he who invited you comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, go up higher.’ Then you will have glory in the presence of those who sit at the table with you. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.
Then He also said to him who invited Him, “When you give a dinner or a supper, do not ask your friends, your brothers, your relatives, nor rich neighbors, lest they also invite you back, and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you shall be repaid at the resurrection of the just.
Allow me to introduce you to Friday Jones. Yes, that was apparently his real name, Friday Jones. Well, six years ago on September the 19th Friday Jones was in downtown Dallas. And he walked up to a portable hot dog stand in the 100 block of Saint Paul Street. He opened a gallon jar that was filled with pickles. And he took out one of the pickles. And he proceeded to eat it in its entirety.
Now the vendor at the stand was a man named David Stepchinsky. And he did not appreciate what Friday Jones had done. And so he demanded sixty-five cents for the eaten pickle. But Jones protested that he had not enjoyed the pickle because it was sour. And therefore instead of turning over sixty-five cents he handed over the grand sum of one penny.
That’s when David Stepchinsky summoned the police. Who promptly arrested Friday Jones and hauled him before a magistrate who found him guilty and fined him one hundred and ten dollars. But if you don’t have sixty-five cents for a pickle you probably do not have one hundred and ten dollars for a fine. And so Friday Jones was given free room and board in the Lew Sterrett Justice Center.
Now there’s one thing you need to know about this story. And I kid you not, it happened on a Friday. So I guess you could say that on a Friday Friday Jones got himself into a pickle by eating a pickle. So that Friday Jones spent Friday night in jail. And I want all of you folks to know that Friday Jones is a classic example of what we kids used to call a pickle puss. Meaning something like pickle face.
Now I’m quite sure that nobody under the age of forty has ever heard that term before. But when I was a kid if a person had a real sour expression on their face and a real sour attitude we said that they looked like they had just eaten a sour pickle. And we called them pickle pusses. And even though the term is very, very much out of date I’m sorry to say that there are even a number of Christians in our churches today who are prime candidates for the designation pickle puss.
I mean they have such a sour outlook. They have such a sorry attitude. They have such a self-centered perspective that they really ought to be called something sort of like that. And folks with that thought in mind this morning may I invite you to accompany me to a dinner. With only one word of advice right up front. Don’t eat the sour pickles.
Would you believe it, folks, that that’s the title of my message to you this morning? The title is Don’t Eat the Sour Pickles. Now I’m sure that a lot of you folks who have spent years inviting people over to your house for dinner have had at least some dinner guests who behaved in very unusual ways. But you may be hard-pressed to top this story.
You see years ago Lewis and Felix invited me over to their house for Thanksgiving dinner. And as usual they served an abundance of delicious food. And I stuffed myself shamelessly. Well after the meal was over the invited guests reassembled in the living room. And so I excused myself briefly to go to the back of Lewis’s house.
And there in one of the boys’ bedroom I saw some bedding on the floor. So I said to myself I will lie down. You understand only for a minute or two. And I lay down. And the people out in the living room waited for me to return. And they waited. And they waited. And they waited. Until finally Lewis went out on a scouting expedition.
And discovered me in the boys’ bedroom. As I recall it he told me I was snoring on the floor of their bedroom. Now folks let’s face it shall we. Going to sleep on the floor of your host’s bedroom after he has just served you a delicious meal is not usually considered the height of social elegance. And I’m quite sure that Miss Manners as well as all other critics of social etiquette would frown on that kind of conduct very sternly.
But sometimes let’s face it dinner guests do behave in very unusual ways. And strangely enough the Lord Jesus Christ was invited one time to a dinner where the behavior of the invited dinner guests was very, very poor indeed. Now we just read about that occasion a few minutes ago in the passage of Scripture that is before us. And you will recall that on this occasion which was a Sabbath day a Pharisee had invited Jesus to dinner.
And it was the main meal of the day. And quite naturally because he was a Pharisee he had other guests there who were Pharisees. And there were people there who were the specialists in the Mosaic law. The Bible calls them lawyers. Now I want you to know something right up front. That if there ever existed on the face of the earth a group of men who could have been described as the Pickle Puss Society Incorporated it was the Pharisees. Believe me it was the Pharisees.
You see the Pharisees were real, real big on criticism and fault-finding and passing harsh and severe judgments on other people. But when it came to such things as love and mercy and compassion they were a collection of spiritual midgets. A collection of spiritual midgets. And if their physical height had been as small as their spiritual height it would have taken ten of them standing on each other’s shoulders to slam dunk a basketball. I mean they were that poor in this area.
And when Jesus walked in all these Pharisees and lawyers started to watch him closely. Because you see there was a man in the house that day who was suffering from the sickness called dropsy. Which is a condition where water collects in the joints of the body and causes swelling and discomfort. And these Pharisees were watching Jesus. Do you suppose they were watching him hoping against hope that this man who was so famous for healing people would do something for this poor fellow with dropsy who was in the house and relieve him of his suffering?
No way. No way. And we saw in the last chapter of the Gospel of Luke that the Pharisees took a very dim view of the fact that Jesus healed seven days a week. They thought He ought to at least take the Sabbath day off and keep the Sabbath holy. So there they were folks watching Jesus wondering if this Rabbi would have the nerve, the gall to heal on the Sabbath day.
Now of course Jesus knew exactly what was in their mind. And He kind of beats them to the punch. And He says to these lawyers and Pharisees, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day?” Ouch. That was a hard one. I mean they didn’t think it was. But they didn’t want to appear to be putting themselves in the path of blocking the healing that might come to this man. So they just didn’t say anything.
Jesus proceeded to heal the man. And then He turns to the Pharisees with another question. And He says, “Which of you who owns an ox or a donkey and it falls into a pit, which of you will not pull him out on the Sabbath day?” Bang. Right between the eyes again. Right on target. These poor guys had more compassion and pity for their animals than they had for that fellow human being who was standing right there.
You know I’d have loved, I’d love to have seen their faces right at this minute. I bet you they looked like they had just eaten a sour pickle. And you know what they had? They had eaten the sour pickle of an unmerciful spirit. Or to put it another way they had eaten the sour pickle that says I don’t care. I don’t care.
Do I need to tell you that even in the Christian church where there are people who are born-again believers in Jesus Christ when they walk out the door of the church and see all the spiritual need around them they don’t care? But boy somebody does something wrong they are ready to pounce. I like the story about the prominent minister who was preparing his Sunday sermon one day. I presume it was on a Saturday. And as the custom was more frequently in those days he was writing the sermon out in longhand apparently.
And his little boy toddled into the room. And the little boy held up a pinched finger. And the boy said, “Look, Dad, how I hurt it.” Now the preacher had been interrupted in the middle of a sentence. He gave his kid a hasty glance. And with a certain amount of irritation in his tone he said, “I can’t help it, son.” The little boy’s eyes got as big as saucers. And he turned around to toddle out of the room. And as he went out of the room he said in a very low voice, “Yes you could. You could have said, ‘Oh.’”
I like that story. Now there’s nothing wrong with preparing sermons folks. I believe in doing it. But if it eats up our time so that we don’t have time to really be concerned with the needs around us there’s something wrong. And hey it’s all right to hear sermons. I’m glad you’re all here today folks. And I hope you listen closely. But if after hearing this sermon you walk out the door and you’re too busy to barely do more than say “Oh” about the many needs that are all around you every day of your life then you’ve missed the boat as far as Christian living is concerned. Your train has left the station.
There was a young hitchhiker one time who was trying to thumb a ride in very cold weather. And he had made the hitchhiking signs so often that his thumb was cold and red. And a sports car moved slowly by him in slow-moving traffic. And as it passed him somebody rolled down the window on the passenger side and threw out a pair of gloves. The hitchhiker put on the gloves. He waved his thanks to the sports car. And he went on thumbing for his ride.
The gloves were nice. But in snowy weather that was below freezing a ride would have been a lot nicer. And there are times my friends when we as Christians throw gloves at the needs that we see around us. Maybe we throw out a few words. Maybe we invite somebody to come to church. But that doesn’t help very much unless we’re really willing to get involved. They need a lift if they’re going to end up in the destination where they ought to end up in fellowship with God.
You see our Christian life really doesn’t count for much unless we have drunk deeply of the compassion, the care, the concern that was manifested in Jesus Christ our Lord. Well apparently Jesus had gotten there fairly early. And evidently He goes into the dining room and takes His place around the table. And the other guests are still coming in. And guess what He noticed about the guests? He noticed that as they came in they looked for the best seat, the best place at the table.
That would be up toward the head of the table where the host sat. They didn’t want the seats at the bottom of the table. They wanted to recline at the head of the table. And so when everybody was seated the Lord Jesus spoke to the assembled guests. And He told them a parable that went something like this. He says, “When you are invited to a wedding feast then go into the dining room and take the lowest place at the table you can find. Because if you take the highest place that you can find your host may come to you and he may say to you this guy really needs to be up here. And you’ll have to get up and you’ll have to go back to the foot of the table. And you’ll be very embarrassed.”
“But if you sit down at the foot of the table then maybe your host can come to you and say, ‘Friend, come up here. Don’t sit way down here. Let me lead you to a better seat at the table.’” And then Jesus added these words, “Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled. But whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.” Boy wouldn’t you have loved to see the faces of those people sitting around that dinner table? I bet all these guys that had chosen out the best seats looked just exactly as if they had eaten a sour pickle.
And you know what they had? They had eaten the sour pickle of self-exaltation. Or to put it another way my friends they had eaten the sour pickle that says me first, you second. And do I need to tell you that there are even Christians like that in the churches? They’re trying to get at the head of the line. They’re trying to get a little more attention than somebody else because they feel they’re a little better than that somebody else. And as they move to the head of the line you know they’re giving the elbow here so that they get the attention that they want.
Norman McGowan was evidently a kind of personal secretary to the famous Sir Winston Churchill who was Great Britain’s very gifted World War II leader. Mr. Churchill had the habit that every time he returned by train from a trip that he wanted his beloved dog Rufus to be the first to greet him. So whoever had brought Rufus to the station would release Rufus from his leash just as soon as Churchill stepped out on the platform. But one day Sir Winston stepped out on the platform along with Norman McGowan. And Rufus came running up, passed by Sir Winston, and was all over Mr. McGowan licking him and greeting him.
Now Sir Winston loved Rufus a bit too much to blame that on Rufus. So Sir Winston turned to McGowan and he said, “In the future, Norman, I would appreciate it if you would stay on board the train until I say hello.” And sometimes there are people that we wish would stay on board the train. Stay in the background. Stay out of sight till we’ve got the attention. So we’ve got the honor and respect that we feel that we need. But remember human honor has no more significance than the affectionate greeting of your favorite pet.
There’s a delightful fable, meaning it’s not a true story you would be able to tell that when I told it. But there’s a delightful fable about the fact that the devil was crossing the desert of Libya one day. And as he crossed the Libyan desert he found a group of men who were trying to tempt the holy hermit that lived out there in the desert. And they weren’t having much success. They used the lust of the flesh. They used fears. They used doubts. They used almost anything they could think of. And this holy hermit was not responding to anything.
So the devil walked up to these men and said, “Gentlemen, your methods are too crude. Please give me a minute.” And then the devil walked over to the holy hermit. And the devil said, “Have you heard the news? Your brother has been made bishop of Alexandria.” And according to the fable a dark look of envy crossed the face of that holy hermit. His brother had gotten ahead of him.
And there are lots of Christians in our churches who just can’t stand for so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so to get more recognition than they do. But remember, remember if you push yourself to the front seat God’s going to push you back. And if you voluntarily withdraw to the back seat someday God is going to push you forward.
Now I really don’t know what the host, the man who invited Jesus, thought of all this. I imagine he could figure out that some of his guests were deeply embarrassed by this parable that Jesus had just spoken. But I thought that was their problem. They were the guests and he was the host. But his turn was coming. And so Jesus addresses his host, the one who had invited him. And this is what He said.
He says, “When you give a dinner or a supper don’t invite your friends, your brothers, your relatives, your rich neighbors. Because there’s a danger there. They may actually invite you back and you’ll be repaid for what you’ve done for them. When you make a dinner,” says Jesus, “invite poor people. Invite people who are maimed and crippled. Blessed because they can’t pay you back. And it will be repaid to you in the resurrection of the just.”
Hey nobody here at Victor Street misunderstands this, do they? Jesus is not saying that the way to get into the resurrection of the just is to have dinners for poor people. We all understand that, don’t we? The only way to get into the resurrection of the just or the resurrection of the righteous is to be completely just, to be completely righteous. And the only way that sinners can do that is to be justified by faith, to have the righteousness of God accounted to them by faith in Jesus Christ.
And Jesus isn’t talking about the way we get into the resurrection of the just. But He is talking about the way we can be rewarded at the resurrection of the just. And Jesus is saying something like this to this host. He says, “Sir you have a bad guest list. The guys that are sitting around the table are mainly your fellow Pharisees and lawyers and probably friends and even relatives of yours. Chuck your guest list. Because these guys may invite you back and repay you for what you’ve done, what you’ve done. Get a new guest list. Invite people who can’t pay you back. And then God will pay you back at the resurrection of the just.”
Wouldn’t you have just loved to see the face of this host right in this minute? I’ll bet he looked like he had eaten a sour pickle. And you know what he had? He had eaten the sour pickle of self-serving kindness. Or to put it another way he had eaten the sour pickle that says I scratch your back, you scratch mine.
Did you folks know we were having a dinner tonight here at Victor Street which will be attended by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself? I’m talking of course about the Lord’s Supper. If you’re a born-again Christian you really need to be here. He’ll be here. He promises to be. We won’t be able to see him with our eyes. But we will be able to hear His voice through His word.
But just suppose, just suppose that Jesus could make Himself visible tonight to us for just a few minutes. And suppose He could talk to the people at Victor Street directly as He did so. Do you think that He might say something like this? Do you think He might say there are some people sitting around this table who eat sour pickles? They’re the kind of person that doesn’t really care about other people. Not very. They’re the kind of person that wants to get the spotlight on them. And they’re the kind of person that does their favors with an eye out for somebody’s favor in return.
I think He would say that about anybody at Victor Street. And if He did I think He might also say something like this. I think He might say that’s a very bad spiritual diet. That will not nourish your spiritual life. So stop eating the sour pickles.
Years ago there was a young preacher who stood up one Sunday morning in a country church to deliver the morning message. What the congregation didn’t know was that he was tired. He was hungry because he had had to walk twenty miles to reach his preaching destination. He gave a terrible sermon. He was flustered and he stuttered around. And when he finally sat down the sermon was a total flop. All of us preachers know about sermons like that.
And the congregation was disgusted. And so after the service nobody invited him to their house for dinner or for shelter. But as he was starting out the road to head back to the point from which he had come the janitor of the church who happened to be a black man came up to him. And asked him if he would be willing to share his humble meal. So the janitor took him to the shanty in which he lived. And this preacher ate with the janitor of the church that day.
Years passed. This young clergyman became a clergyman with a worldwide reputation. After a generation he was back in the same spot in rural Missouri where he had originally preached this sermon. He was there to dedicate a big new country church. Almost the whole community was in attendance. It was a big event in that community.
And after he was finished with the service the people in the audience crowded around him asking him to come to their houses for dinner. But the clergyman waved them all away. And he called for the black janitor. And he said to the janitor, “Years ago I wasn’t too good for you and I’m not too good for you today.”
Do you realize folks that some of the most important dinners that you will ever give are not the ones you give to your friends, your relatives and people who will invite you back? Those dinners may never even register on the scales of the kingdom of God. The really big dinners that you give are the ones you give because you’re a caring person. Because you’re not too big to reach down to the humble and lowly and entertain somebody that nobody else wants to entertain. And because you’re willing to do it without any thought of earthly payback.
And you know what? You know what? Those are good principles not just for giving dinners. Those are good principles to live by. Do you remember the old orange juice commercial? They used to say it isn’t just for breakfast anymore. Here’s my commercial in closing. Compassion, humility, unselfish kindness. They’re not just for dinner anymore. They are for everything. Everything that you do.
Shall we pray? Father teach us the dinner table lessons that the Lord Jesus Christ has communicated in this passage of Scripture. Help us to be the men and women You want us to be for His sake. Amen.