Nepaug Bible Church - http://www.nepaugchurch.org - Pastor's Prayer Meeting Lesson Notes - http://www.nepaugchurch.org/pm/pm19980916.htm

LUKE: GOSPEL OF CERTIFYING THE CHRISTIAN FAITH
Part LII: The Credibility Of Christ's Messiahship Seen In His Superior Quality Of Love
(Luke 14:1-6 with 7-35)
  1. Though Jesus presented Himself as from God, He was not compatible with Israel's conservative Pharisees.
  2. This incompatibility between Jesus and the Pharisees of repute needs to be validated if one is to believe Jesus is the true Messiah, and Luke 14:8-35 expose Christ's objections to Pharisaism's false view of love:
    1. The Credibility Of Christ's Messiahship Seen In His Superior Quality Of Love, Lk. 14:1-6, 7-35.
    2. When the Pharisees invited Jesus to dine with them at a chief Pharisee's residence, the Pharisees exhibited several ungodly qualities of a false love in the process as follows, Lk. 14:1-6:
      1. They displayed proud, selfish love in choosing the honored seats at the dining facility, Lk. 14:1, 7.
      2. They displayed a partial love in filling the seats with Pharisees, not with common folk, Lk. 14:1-2, 12.
      3. They displayed a worldly love for that fed their lusts of the eyes and pride of this life, Lk. 14:1, 7.
      4. They displayed a peer-pressure, herd-mentality love instead of an objective, God-value love:
        1. The Pharisee had invited and seated a dropsy patient in front of Jesus amidst Sabbath Day dinner guests of Pharisees, an effort to put peer pressure on Jesus to avoid healing the afflicted in the midst of the Pharisees who would be opposed to such a Sabbath Day healing, Lk. 14:1-2.
        2. Thus, they valued Pharisee peer pressure over God's preference to address life-threatening needs.
    3. So, following His healing of the dropsy patient, Jesus addressed to the objections and admonitions He had on false Pharisee love in Luke 14:7-33 as follows:
      1. First, Jesus told the dinners guests to counter their pride seen in choosing the better seats by sitting in the lowly seats. He argued that it was better to be asked to move up to a more honored seat than to be demoted by the host because of one's choosing the more honored chair, Luke 14:7-11.
      2. Second, Jesus told the host to invite not the self-righteous who could repay with an invitation to their homes, but the destitute and unworthy who could not repay to reflect God's righteousness, 14:12-14.
      3. Third, Jesus gave a parable to counter the worldly values that tainted their kind of love:
        1. When one Pharisee at dinner stated that those eating bread in the Kingdom of God would be blessed, Jesus knew that he felt only the Pharisees would dine with God, Lk. 14:15.
        2. Accordingly, Jesus gave a parable to show how worldly issues such as property ownership (14:16-18), business opportunities [the opportunities offered in the newly purchased oxen, 15:19] and pleasures (14:20) kept many from believing in Him to enter the Kingdom, Luke 14:16-20.
        3. Then he told how God's Kingdom would include those who believed in Him though they lacked of this world's goods or valued experiences because they believed in Him unlike the Pharisees, 21-24.
      4. Fourth, Jesus taught that unlike the Pharisees who heeded peer pressure, God's true disciples loved and obeyed God so that, if needed, they bucked peer pressure to do God's will, Luke 14:25-33:
        1. The Pharisees had set Jesus up with a dinner surrounded by Pharisees to pressure Jesus not to heal the dropsy patient due to objecting Pharisee pressures. That would result in their claiming Jesus to be hypocritical, healing at the sy nagogue before the masses on the Sabbath but not before Pharisees!
        2. Thus, before the largest peer group possible, before the crowds, Jesus told people to love God and follow Him above family or even a good reputation in the community (bearing one's cross), 14:25-27
        3. Though loving God this way above all other pressures of one's peer group(s) was costly (14:28-33), it was the only love that was worth anything if one were to be an effective servant of God's, 14:34f.
Lesson: Jesus was humble, impartial and non-self indulging in loving all men, and his love for God and obedience to Him exceeded pressures to the contrary from all human peer groups, whether they were family, religious or community peer groups. Th at made Him truly effective.

Application: Like Jesus, we Christians must be humble, impartial and non-self indulging in our love toward others, and we must love and obey God above pressures to the contrary that rise from family, church or community peer groups. Anything less makes us as ineffective as were the Pharisees where doing so makes us effective, influential disciples and servants of God.

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