Despising the Spotlight

You may be familiar with the name Martyn Lloyd-Jones.  He was the pastor of Westminster Chapel in London for 30 years.  He was one of the men during the 20^th century who brought back to prominence the expository method of preaching where a book of the Bible is taught through verse by verse and line by line.  Over 50 years ago Dr. Lloyd-Jones preached a sermon on spiritual depression.  In it he said the following:

“Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but they start talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc.  Somebody is talking. Who is talking? Your self is talking to you.”

His point was that we often tend to talk negatively to ourselves and we ought instead to speak the word of God into our own hearts and minds.  This has been popularized by other men in recent decades with the phrase “preach to yourself.”  In other words, the very first person who needs to be spiritually impacted by a sermon is the one delivering it.  But this idea did not start with Lloyd-Jones in the middle of the 20^th century or with John Calvin four centuries earlier or with any other man.  It existed long before in Scriptures such as Psalm 42:5, which was Lloyd-Jones’s text for that Sunday morning half a century ago.  The verse reads: Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?  Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God.  The Psalmist is frustrated.  He knows perfectly well the tremendous grounds he has for joyful living.  He is fully aware of the fact that he ought to be placing his hope firmly in God.  Yet he finds himself downcast.  He finds himself sad and depressed and unsettled.  So he essentially yells at himself, saying “Stop it!”  This is the idea of “preach to yourself.”

I think it is an entirely biblical principle that any time someone teaches or preaches the Bible, they ought to be preaching first to themselves.  But today, the text I’ve selected has done a particularly thorough job of skewering me with its confrontation of my own sin.  So, perhaps more than usual, I am very much preaching to myself with this topic.  Maybe by the time I’m done you will feel that I’m preaching to you as well.

This is the text I am focusing on today, verses 12 through 14 of the fourteenth chapter of Luke.  It reads as follows:

He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid.  But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you.  For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.

This chapter of the gospel of Luke is all about a dinner party.  We read in verse 1: One Sabbath, when he went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching him carefully.  Let’s consider for a moment a little harmony of the gospels and see what that might reveal to us about Jesus’s mindset here. 

The setting is just after the Jewish Feast of Dedication.  This holiday is known in modern times as Hanukkah and it is typically celebrated in the month of December.  Jesus is only a short time away from His betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion which would have been in March or April of the following year.  It is literally just a few weeks after the confrontation with the Jews in the Temple in John chapter 8. 

Why is this significant?  Because Jesus had explicitly claimed His deity in John 8:58: Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”  Make no mistake about this.  He was very intentional with how He chose His words here.  He had been speaking of Abraham in the past tense, but then oddly He switches to the present tense mid-sentence.  Why would He do this?  Because it exactly mirrored God’s description of Himself to Moses in Exodus 3:14: God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” 

The Jews knew exactly what He was claiming and they were not going to tolerate it.  Verse 59 of John 8 shows their response: So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple.  This was blasphemy.  A man claiming to be God.  It was a capital offense under the Jewish code of laws, the Torah.  What Jesus did here was absolutely and completely unacceptable to the unbelieving Jews.

And here’s the point.  Jesus, after being on the brink of arrest and possible punishment or execution, turns around just a few weeks later and goes into the house of one of the very men who was seeking to kill Him.  Verse 1 says they were watching Him closely.  Jesus was no idiot.  He obviously knew how volatile and dangerous the situation was, yet He walked right into it anyhow and deliberately placed His head in the wolf’s jaws.

Now someone might say that because Christ knew the future He knew that His time of sacrifice had not come yet and therefore it diminishes His courage here.  To that I would point to Jeremiah 17:10: “I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”  It’s the fruit that is rewarded.  God obviously knows the thoughts and intentions of every man’s heart and He will judge men based on that.  But He will also reward people based on their deeds. 

And don’t we operate the same way?  Suppose a three story building is on fire on the third floor.  The fire has just started and it’s going to be several minutes before it spreads far enough to threaten anyone below.  A young girl is standing in a hallway on the first floor.  The little one could walk out at any time and escape the danger.  But she is frightened by the noise and the panic stricken people around her.  So she stays where she is, frozen in terror, crying for someone to help her.  A fireman hears her cries, immediately rushes into the building, and brings the little girl out.  He was never in the slightest bit of danger because the fire was very far away from him.

Do we qualify our praise of this brave man because he knew that there was nothing to fear?  Of course not.  We honor him because he rescued a little girl.  It doesn’t matter how far away the fire was.  She needed help and he gave it to her.  It is the fireman’s fruits, or actions that we focus on.  So it should also be in our consideration of Jesus’s actions here in Luke 14.  He is a hero for how He confronted danger and evil.  And not only did He walk in to this Sabbath dinner courageously and without hesitation, but He proceeded to preach to everyone there right in the middle of it. 

Never one to shrink from proclaiming truth even when it made His audience uncomfortable, the Lord spares no one at this banquet from the piercing power of His teaching.  In verses 2 through 6 He blatantly defies the Pharisaical legalism that was infecting Israel by healing a man.  This was an act strictly forbidden by the extra Jewish laws that had been added onto the guidelines given by God through Moses.  The Jewish religious leaders had taken the purity and simplicity of God’s design for the Sabbath, to honor Him and to rest from labors, and had dressed it up with unnecessary pomp and circumstance, rules and regulations.  So Jesus condemns them for their hypocrisy.  He points out that when the situation suits them they would happily break their own laws in order to save a loved one or a valuable possession.

Then, addressing the whole assembly He chastises them for trying to seize preferential places of honor at the table in verses 7 through 11.  This is really the same message He had to preach to His own disciples repeatedly.  They jockeyed for position amongst themselves several times, even making each other angry with their attempts at one-upmanship.  In response Jesus told them “So the last will be first, and the first last.”

And now, beginning in verse 12, our Lord turns His attention to the host for the evening.  This man was a chief, or a ruler of the Pharisees.  This means that he was probably a member of the Sanhedrin.  He was probably in on the internal plots and discussions to kill Jesus.  And more than likely he had invited Christ into his home specifically for the purpose of trying to catch Him in some word or deed that they could use against Him.  Jesus of course knows all this and gives the man a little dose of his own self-righteous medicine.  His teaching echoes across time to us today and I believe it’s going to nail us right to the wall.

Let’s look closely at what the Lord says here.  Jesus was a master at using concrete examples and relevant images.  He spun word pictures in the air that fired the imagination and spoke deeply into the heart of His audience.  That’s exactly what He does here.  He is at a dinner party.  He wants to communicate a truth to this man.  So He does it in the most clear and unmistakable manner possible; He phrases His teaching around the concept of a social gathering. 

Verse 12 describes His method: He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet”.  The two words used here can really run the gamut of definitions pertaining to meals.  Placed together like this they can mean anything from a casual and informal breakfast to a fancy banquet with guests and everything in between.  The point is that by using the words He did Jesus covered every possible permutation of the act of consuming food.

And the Lord is not done with this pattern of covering all the bases.  He goes on to say: “do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors”.  Notice how precise Jesus is with His categories of people.  First He mentions friends.  These are not casual acquaintances.  They are dearly loved ones.  The word used is “philos”.  This is one of the Greek expressions of love.  It is a mutual affection and pleasure enjoyed in someone’s presence. 

This word could be applied to family members given the right type of relationship.  But I don’t think that is what Jesus has in view here.  I think He is specifically talking about really good friends.  The reason is the very next word; “adelphos”, translated here as brothers.  This is the word for a biological brother or perhaps a fellow countryman.  But not just any brother or countryman; a very close one.  So because Jesus covers dear brothers with “adelphos” I think He specifically intended “philos” to refer to non-biological friends.

But He’s not done covering His bases.  The next group is “suggenes”.  These are also brothers or countrymen.  But unlike “adelphos”, “suggenes” describes people who are not very close to you.  Do you see how almost ridiculously specific Christ is being with this?  Yet He is still not done.  The final group is “plousios geiton”.  This is literally wealthy or rich neighbors.  Why is the Lord so painstakingly precise and inclusive here?

I think it’s because Jesus knew perfectly well the tendency of man to obfuscate and avoid responsibility.  So He wanted to ensure there were no logical loopholes people could squirm through in order to avoid His teaching.  They could deny His authority and ignore what He is saying, but they could not and cannot pretend that He doesn’t cover their particular situation.

What about us?  Are we prepared as a local church in 21^st century America to listen to what God says and allow it to penetrate our hearts?  Are we willing to be pierced through by the word of God, even to the division of joints and marrow, soul and spirit?  We’ll come back to that question in a few minutes.  But for now just think about how much attention you are paying right now wherever you are to what Christ is teaching you.

Moving back to our text, what is it that Jesus has to say about inviting these groups of people to dinner?  Why does He not want us to have these people over for supper?  Because, He says, “lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid.”  It doesn’t matter what time of day it is.  It is irrelevant which meal you’re eating.  It makes no difference how much money you spend.  God doesn’t care about the potential for food to go to waste.  He states emphatically, don’t you ever invite anyone that might possibly have even the slightest, most remote chance, of paying you back with a return invite.

Instead Jesus says: “But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.”  In other words, bring in the people who are the least capable, in point of fact completely incapable, of rewarding your gracious dinner hosting.  Christ’s list here is just as comprehensive as the first one.  He mentions the poor.  These are the homeless.  They are probably unwashed, carrying a stench of body odor with them as they come into your home.  He includes the crippled.  Think of someone who has been badly burned to such an extent that their face is disfigured and it is difficult to meet their eyes.  He covers the lame.  In our culture it might be someone handicapped and bound to a wheelchair.  And he finishes up with the blind.  This is not just physically blind.  It also has a connotation of mental blindness; in other words psychologically unstable or even insane.

Why?  Why is Jesus instructing us to open our homes to people that if we are honest about it we probably find distasteful?  Wouldn’t it be much more comfortable to stick to our approved list of friends, neighbors, and relatives?  Aren’t we much safer to invite fellow church members to dinner?  Perhaps in the short term, but Christ’s focus is never the temporal.  He doesn’t care for the material benefits of this life.  Instead He is always, without exception, focused like a laser beam upon the eternal rewards to be found in His Father’s kingdom.  And so He says if we follow His advice “you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you.  For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” 

And this reveals the point.  In considering the first group of invitees it must be acknowledged that they have the potential to offer repayment upon earth.  In contrast, the second bunch of guests offer us no possibility of repayment on earth.  Instead, by demonstrating our status as adopted children of God by emulating the example His Son gives here we confirm the certainty, the absolute rock solid assurance, and the concrete grounds of repayment in heaven.

You see, Jesus is not really talking about a dinner party here.  Now to be sure, I think His teaching can and should be taken literally.  We very much should be investing ourselves in reaching out to the poor, the downtrodden, the castoffs, the lost, and the marginalized members of our society.  We ought to be inviting them into our houses and showing the love of Christ in a very personal manner.  Consider 1 Corinthians 1:27: But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.  And remember James 1:27: Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.  If we have any hesitation about being open and inclusive with the sanctity of our homes we need to get over it. 

But at the same time, I do not take this passage to mean that Jesus is condemning all social gatherings of friends or relatives.  I don’t believe He is displeased with activities such as supper clubs at Daniels Bible Church.  This is borne out by the model of the early church.  Acts 2:42 records their practices under the specific authority of the Apostles and therefore implicitly correct: And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

No, I think that underneath the literal details of the social activities Jesus is describing there is a foundational truth of far greater power and far more terrible insidiousness.  And we need to uncover this deeper meaning if we are to be fully transformed as Christ intends.  In order to get at this the following question needs to be asked.  What is the principle, or the timeless truth, that Jesus is teaching?  The issue is being repaid on earth rather than in heaven.  Why is this important?  Because of our short sighted obsession with our present physical circumstances and our temporal fixation upon the creature rather than the Creator.

You see, we humans have a problem.  We tend to live by the law of reciprocity.  That is, “the practice of exchanging things with others for mutual benefit.”  In other words, I give you a gift at Christmas and I expect one in return.  Now this in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing.  But our sinful natures take it, corrupt it, twist it, and turn reciprocity into an opportunity to over value the things of this earth and under value the things of heaven.  Allow me to explain with some examples.

• Have you ever given someone a gift, received no thanks for it, and felt disgruntled? 
• Have you ever done work for someone, received no acknowledgement for it, and thought to yourself that that’s the last time you’ll help them out? 
• Have you ever let someone out in traffic, given them a friendly hand wave, received no corresponding wave in return, and thought nasty thoughts toward the other person? 
• Let’s get real personal for the church attenders reading this.  Have you ever worked yourself to the bone at church and then felt bitter at those who seem to only show up for 1 ½ hours on Sunday morning and don’t seem to contribute to the church’s ministry the rest of the time?

If any of these or other similar examples describe you then you’re living by the law of reciprocity.  In your judgment you are not given your just reward, right now, for services rendered, effort invested, and/or time spent.  Then you take that conviction and allow it to turn to evil thoughts in your mind.  Even if your thoughts don’t turn to evil, just the fact that you are fixated upon being rewarded in this life reveals the problem that Jesus is confronting.  It is a focus upon earthly things rather than heavenly things.

In His admonition to the Pharisee hosting the dinner party Christ skewers this type of thinking.  He cuts through the surface of our denials, hollows out the insides of our defenses, and exposes our true heart for what it really is.  And those of us who are followers of Christ must ask ourselves the question: why in the world do we engage in this sort of behavior?  For unbelievers it at least makes sense.  Temporal honor and glory, in this life, is all they’ve got.  But we of all people, Christians who have been bought with a price and promised an eternal inheritance of undefiled and imperishable glory and honor.  We should know better than to stake our hopes and dreams on earthly reward and significance and acknowledgement.

So, what should we make of Jesus’s teaching here in Luke chapter 14?  I think there is an over-riding outlook we need to adopt and then at least three actions we can take in order to support that outlook.  The outlook is that of despising the spotlight.  What do I mean by that?  Well, a spotlight is a focused beam of light typically directed at a specific object for the purpose of calling attention to it.  It is designed to promote whatever is under its fluorescent glare.  It is intended for acknowledgement and perhaps glory and honor.  We typically think of a spotlight in terms of a stage production such as a play or a talent show.  In that context the audience is intended to clearly see the one who is performing.  And then, after the performance is over it is customary for the audience to give the entertainer immediate gratification in the form of applause or cheering.  Usually the artist on stage is hungry for that affirmation from the crowd.  They feed on it and draw energy from it.  They may even go so far as to lust after that glory and use the quest to continually seek it as the driving ambition for the continuance of their career.  To ensure that this comes about the performer will plan, train, and invest everything they have in the pursuit of continued success.

In opposition to this man centered outlook on life Jesus says “No!  Do not seek after repayment or reward here on earth.  Instead look to the heavenly rewards that God has promised to those who seek after Him with all their heart.  And this teaching moment in Luke 14 is not an isolated incident. 

Earlier I mentioned Christ’s teaching to His disciples about the least and the greatest.  One of the descriptions of this can be found in Mark 10:42-44: And Jesus called them to him and said to them, “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them.  But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. 

The point was that the world focuses on instant rewards, in the here and now.  But for Christ’s disciples it was not to be this way.  They were to focus on service, reckoning their reward as being found in heaven with God rather than on earth with the world.  In Matthew 5:3 and 5:5 Jesus praised those who are poor in spirit and those who are meek.  He promised that their reward will be the greatest of all, even unto the kingdom of heaven and the inheritance of the earth.

With Christ’s instructions in mind, what should be our response when the spotlight of life begins to shine our way?  Should we avoid it?  Perhaps, but I don’t think that carries a heavy enough weight of intensity.  Avoid sounds to me like a casual side stepping action and I don’t think that is good enough for what is being taught.  How about fleeing the spotlight?  Well, that is a little better.  There is definitely more effort invested in the idea of running away from fame and glory.  But I think both of these are insufficient.  When we stop to contemplate the fullness of God’s glory and our mandate to worship Him it should become evident that this seeking after God is an all or nothing endeavor.  If we further realize that when we seek after temporal rewards in this life and our focus narrows down to that level we are implicitly devaluing God’s worth in our minds.  Then, if we stop to consider that any distraction away from God and any lowering of His perceived value is a sin, there becomes only one appropriate response.  We must despise the spotlight. 

In Matthew 12:30 Jesus taught: “Whoever is not with me is against Me.”  Perhaps you throw up the defense that you’re not in opposition to Jesus, you’re just enjoying what the world has to offer for a season.  In 1^st John 2:15 the apostle wrote: If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  Is this a big deal to you, being unable to love God and having His love for you absent from your life?

These truths must drive us to hate anything that pre-occupies our attention and draws us away from God who is the most beautiful and excellent object of praise we can possibly gaze upon.  We must be violent and ruthless with our own sinful tendencies to grasp after fame, glory, and honor.  As Paul said in Romans 8:13: If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.  Make war upon your sin church.  Become the enemy of your own tendency to prioritize reward and repayment on earth.

But how do we do this?  First we need to recognize and admit that we have a problem.  In John 12:43 the author is describing the reason that some of the authorities refused to believe in the Messiah: for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.  Does that line describe you as well?  Do you orbit around the desire for affirmation and reassurance from the people around you?  I suspect it describes every one of us at least some of the time.  We need to see that tendency in ourselves for what it is; a complete and utter abomination of God’s glory.

Secondly, we need to think long term.  We need to set our eyes on the eternal rather than the temporal.  Don’t be like Peter in Mark 9:5, who after being unimaginably privileged to witness the transfiguration of Christ, could think of nothing except the here and now: And Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good that we are here.  Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.”

Finally, we need to plan for change.  Jesus is giving this teaching in the context of the dinner party He is at.  And He says that when the host invites people he should adopt a different strategy.  This is a reasoned and careful process of taking time and effort to think ahead about what our intentions are.  Christ wants us to spend time in forethought and consideration of the ramifications of our actions.  This is the point of the parable in Matthew 7 of the man who built his house on sand versus the man who built his house on rock.

Now, how will we respond to our Lord’s instructions today?  Will we carefully assess our own hearts and take stock of our focus in life, making changes where necessary in order to fall in line with His example?  Or will we be like the one who was reclining at the table in the Pharisee’s house?  This man apparently had his head firmly in the clouds.  He completely missed the point that Jesus was teaching.  It seems that all he bothered to listen to was the last sentence; “For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”  For, his response in verse 15 is devoid of any hint of conviction or repentance: “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!”

Will you be like that man today?  Will you sit there with your fingers firmly stuck in your ears until you hear something you like?  Then will you proclaim joyfully “It sure is good to be a Christian in America!”  And all the while you completely miss the sin staring you right in the face.