YET another Sabbath-day incident. The place, not a synagogue, but the dinner-table of one of Israel’s chief ecclesiastics, and he a Pharisee. Luke (who alone reports the case) says “they watched Him” (14:1). Nothing more need be stated concerning the attitude of the host and his friends towards their Guest. They were sitting at table with God manifested in flesh, yet so blind were they that they knew it not.
It was an instructive occasion for those who had ears to hear. The lips of Eternal Truth were freely opened. Things were said that day which should have sent every guest to his closet in humiliation before God. The Saviour spoke of the boundless grace of God, and He spoke also of the hopeless evil of the human heart. The presence of a sufferer—a man afflicted with dropsy—furnished Him with His text. He raised the question of the Sabbath himself this time. He demanded of the lawyers and Pharisees about Him: “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day or not?” Obtaining no response, he healed the poor fellow and let him go. Knowing that they were bitterly censuring Him in their hearts for His deed of mercy, He proceeded thus: “Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fall into a pit and will not straightway pull him out on the Sabbath day?” The challenge was unanswerable. Where their own interests were concerned they would not scruple to act promptly, let the day be ever so sacred.
Man―even religious man―thus stands convicted of being utterly out of harmony with God. His boasted fidelity to religious forms is not the fruit of love to God, but simply gratification of his spiritual pride. What can be conceived more offensive than this? If open transgressors produce “wicked works” (Col. 1:21), religionists produce “dead works” (Heb. 9:14), and both are equally hateful to Him with Whom we have to do. So morally alienated is man from God that it has to be said to all alike: “Ye must be born anew” (John 3:7).
The Saviour’s exposure of the human heart at the Pharisee’s dinner-table is painful to read. First, He rebuked the pride of His fellow-guests, as shown in their eager scramble for the chief seats, then He censured the selfishness of the host in that he had invited only those to his table who would be certain to recompense him again (Luke 14:7-14). Pride and selfishness in the presence of the self-sacrificing One who had left heaven’s glory for Calvary’s cross in His love to perishing sinners! A person venturing the remark, “Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God,” He added the parable of the great supper, the sad moral of which, as regards man, is that though God provide something ever so costly and rare, man has no heart for it. The scramblers for the best seats in the Pharisee’s house wanted no seat at all where God and His grace were found. “I pray thee have me excused” was their uniform reply to His loving invitation. If God would have guests at His feast, such is the animosity of the human heart towards Him, even amongst the religious, that He must needs “compel them to come in.” Truly, if man’s heart be only evil, the heart of God is only good, and that eternally.