- 2 days ago
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:22Let us pray.
00:41Let us pray.
01:00Let us pray.
01:24Let us pray.
01:30Let us pray.
01:31Give me grace amidst the storms of adversity and the blasts of persecution and misfortune to fly for refuge to
01:39you alone, to seek you, to call upon you.
02:17Let us pray.
02:21Let us pray.
02:33Let us pray.
02:42Let us pray.
04:12Let us pray.
05:20Let us pray.
05:34Amen.
05:43Let us pray.
05:52Amen.
05:56Let us pray.
06:01your praise.
06:32. . .
07:03. . .
07:33. . .
07:33And to the Holy Ghost
07:38As it was in the beginning
07:41Is now and ever shall be
07:47World without strength
07:55Amen
08:05In Jury is not wrong
08:09His name is praise in Israel
08:15And Savior is his covenant
08:22And his dwelling is silent
08:29Every king he had lost
08:33And ever
08:34The shieldless soul
08:38And the battle
08:41Not all more
08:44Honor and fight
08:46Than the hills
08:50Of the robbers
08:53The proud are out
08:57They must let their seed
09:01And all the men who stand
09:06For mighty
09:07The proud are few
09:11And while the youth
09:14Who are called on shaken
09:18With the champions
09:25Thou even thou hast to be faithful
09:30And always stand in thy sight
09:35When thou art a ring
09:40Thou didst cause my judgment
09:43To be heard from heaven
09:46Dear God
09:49Dear God
09:50And all the men who stand
09:55And all the men who stand
09:56When God
09:57Was to judge
09:59And to help
10:03The weak
10:04The glory
10:04On earth
10:08The grace
10:10And that the grace
10:18For then
10:19Shalt thou
10:21With me
10:24Promise
10:25Praise unto the Lord, your Lord, and give it, for ye that are of the Lord, bring presence unto him,
10:39that are so we fear.
10:44He shall refrain from spirit of princes, that is part of all among the kings of the earth.
11:00Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
11:12As it was in the beginning, is now, and never shall be, but without death. Amen.
11:38A reading from the Gospel according to St. Luke, chapter 14.
12:08He took him, and healed him, and let him go.
12:13He answered them, Which of you, if your son or an ox fell into the well, would not immediately pull
12:20him out on the Sabbath day?
12:23And they could not answer him regarding these things.
12:29Then, when Jesus noticed how the guests chose the places of honour, he told them a parable.
12:36He said to them, When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not take the place of
12:41honour, because a person more distinguished than you may have been invited.
12:46So the host who invited both of you will come to you and say, Give this man your place.
12:53Then, ashamed, you will begin to move to the least important place.
12:58But when you are invited, go and take the least important place, so that when your host approaches, he will
13:04say to you, Friend, move up here to a better place.
13:09Then you will be honoured in the presence of all who share the meal with you.
13:14For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.
13:23He also said to the man who had invited him, When you host a dinner or a banquet, don't invite
13:30your friends or your brothers, or your relatives or rich neighbours, so that you can be invited by them in
13:36return and get repaid.
13:39But when you host an elaborate meal, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind.
13:45Then you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the
13:51righteous.
13:55When one of those at the meal with Jesus heard this, he said to him, Blessed is everyone who will
14:01feast in the kingdom of God.
14:05Jesus said to him, A man once gave a great banquet and invited many guests.
14:11At the time for the banquet, he sent his slave to tell those who had been invited, Come, because everything
14:19is now ready.
14:21But one after another they all began to make excuses.
14:26The first said to him, I have just bought a field, and I must go out and see it, please
14:31excuse me.
14:33Another said, I have just got married, and I cannot come.
14:46And so the slave came back and reported this to his master.
14:51Then the master of the household was furious, and said to his slave, Go head quickly to the streets and
14:57the alleys of the city, and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.
15:04Then the slave said, Sir, what you have instructed has been done, and there is still room.
15:10So the master said to his slave, Go into the highways and the country roads, and urge people to come,
15:17so that my house will be filled.
15:20I tell you, not one of those individuals who were invited will taste my banquet.
15:26This is the word of the Lord.
15:29Thanks be to God.
15:37Jesus took advantage of a potentially hostile situation, and used it to demonstrate some fundamental truths.
15:46First of all, rather than waiting for the mischief to begin, he opened the discourse himself, by asking if it
15:53would be right for him to heal someone on the Sabbath.
15:57You said this passage in its context.
16:00In the previous chapter, Jesus had been under fierce criticism for healing a sick woman on the Sabbath.
16:08And here there was a sick man at the banquet.
16:12Pouncing on the silence of his enemies, for they knew they could not reply.
16:18Jesus asked simply, If they had a son or an animal which fell into a well on the Sabbath,
16:23would they leave it there until the next day?
16:28Again there was no reply, for they all knew how foolish they had made themselves.
16:34If it is necessary to do something on the Sabbath, then it is necessary.
16:40Imagine a house being on fire, and the fire brigade saying that they could not come until the next day,
16:46because it was the Sabbath.
16:49Nonsense.
16:51Matthew 12.12 tells us, It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath, for the Sabbath was made for
16:57people and not people for the Sabbath.
17:04Jesus went on to provide his dinner audience with a lesson in etiquette.
17:09Looking around him, he probably noticed all too easily the way in which the pecking order was established at the
17:15table.
17:16With the Pharisees seated at the top table, and the camp followers at the far end of the room.
17:22We are not told at which end of the seating plan Jesus and his disciples were allocated to.
17:30When we are invited to a dinner, do not assume that we are the guest of honour, for if we
17:36do we are heading for a humiliation.
17:40Imagine you are the lord of the area, and you are invited to dinner at a merchant's house.
17:46As soon as you are the most important person in the region, you presume the dinner is in your honour
17:53and take seat at the top table.
17:56Shortly after everyone is seated, the king arrives, and you are removed to the lowest seat of the bottom table.
18:05How humiliating can this be!
18:07How much better it would have been to sit initially at the lowest place, and then be invited to take
18:13the place of honour.
18:15And so it is for the Christian.
18:18We must always be humble and look for the lowest place.
18:22Not because we do not believe in ourselves, or lack self-respect.
18:28But because we do not consider ourselves of any great importance, certainly of no greater importance than anyone else.
18:37Never let it be said of a Christian that he or she should consider themselves above another.
18:43For we are all lowly servants of God.
18:48Furthermore, the world is full of far more deserving people than we are.
18:56We have some words which would make us sit up and think for a moment.
19:00For I am quite sure that many of us like to go to dinner parties or host them.
19:06And it is to the host that the words are addressed by Jesus.
19:11Do not host a meal in anticipation of being invited back.
19:17How often have we thought, I am not going to invite them because they never invited us back after the
19:23last time.
19:25Perhaps many of us have said these words.
19:27And probably we have all thought along these lines at some point.
19:33But the message from Jesus, though, shows what a wrong attitude this is.
19:38Furthermore, if we are going to cook a nice meal, go out of your way to invite those who cannot
19:43invite you back.
19:45Because in this way, it shows genuine charity.
19:50Jesus calls us to acts of charity.
19:53But true charity is giving without reservation.
19:58It is giving without the expectation of anything in return.
20:01It is giving without keeping an account.
20:04It is giving solely for the love of giving itself.
20:11So if we like giving dinner parties, go down to the homeless centre or the food bank and invite your
20:17guests.
20:20I do not suggest that Jesus was suggesting that we never invite our friends.
20:26But perhaps we should try and invite strangers as well as friends.
20:38The parable given by Jesus presents the Gospel as a sacred feast,
20:42prepared by the Divine Lord for the hungry hearts of men.
20:47The invitation is declined by one and then another,
20:50who have inclinations for other and lower good than that which is provided.
20:57Hence the measures taken to supply their room.
21:01The text suggests several things.
21:04Firstly, the largeness of God's loving purpose.
21:07God wants his house to be filled.
21:10The house of his grace is built on a large scale.
21:13For in it are many mansions, many rooms.
21:17The magnitude of it answers to the greatness of his power and to the boundlessness of his love.
21:24The number of the ultimately redeemed will be vast indeed.
21:30To this point we should remember the hopes of all holy and generous souls.
21:35The terms of the predictive scriptures.
21:39The attributes of the wise, strong and benign father of men.
21:45The duration of the redemptive scheme.
21:49And the character of the redemptive work, the incarnation.
21:53The sorrow, the shame, the death of the Son of God.
22:00God's loving purpose is to gather a multitude.
22:03Which no man can number into the heavenly home.
22:06Into the eternal mansions.
22:11Then we can see the fullness of the divine commission.
22:15Those who represent the Lord of the feasts.
22:17Are to go into the highways into the hedges.
22:20And compel men to come in.
22:22No one is to be excluded.
22:24No efforts are to be spared.
22:26No stone is to be left unturned.
22:29To win men to the feast.
22:32There is to be a sacred compulsion used.
22:35Rather than the efforts of the servants should be unsuccessful.
22:40There is no warrant for persecution.
22:43No two things can conceivably be further apart from one another than the use of violence and the spirit of
22:50Christ.
22:52To employ cruelty in order to compel men into Christianity is worse than a senseless solacism.
23:00It is a flagrant and guilty contradiction.
23:04There are other and nobler ways of compelling men to come in.
23:08To the kingdom and the church of Christ.
23:11Ways which are not discordant.
23:13But in harmony with the spirit and the teaching of the Lord of life.
23:18These are they.
23:20Of the constant and irresistible beauty of our daily life.
23:24The waters of spiritual loveliness were the hardest stones of spiritual stubbornness.
23:33The occasional magnanimity of Christian conduct.
23:39Men are often compelled to bow down in admiration.
23:42And even in reverence before some deed of noble self-sacrifice.
23:46Of lofty heroism.
23:51The convincing presentation of the Christian ultimate.
23:54The truth of Christ.
23:56May be presented so cumulatively.
23:59So forcefully.
24:00So directly.
24:01So practically.
24:02So willingly.
24:03So affectionately.
24:05That even the most defiant are knocked back.
24:08The most prejudiced are convinced.
24:10The most impervious are penetrated.
24:13And the most insensible are moved and won.
24:16They are compelled to come in.
24:21We have the earnest persistence of Christian zeal.
24:25There is a blind imprudent zeal.
24:28Which is worse than worthless.
24:30Which only teases and torments.
24:32Which does not allure but drags to a whole greater distance.
24:36But there is also a wise holy divine persistence.
24:41Which will not be refused.
24:43Which employs every weapon in the sacred armory.
24:46Which knows how to wait in patience.
24:48As well as how to work in ardor.
24:51Which like the patient saviour himself.
24:54Stands at the door and knocks.
24:56This is the zeal.
24:58Which continues to plead with men for God.
25:01And ceases not to plead with God for men.
25:04Until the barriers are broken down.
25:06Until the indifference is broken up.
25:09Until the heart looks up to heaven and cries.
25:12What shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?
25:21Let us pray.
25:24Lord of all power and might.
25:26Who is the author and giver of all good things.
25:31Graft in our hearts the love of your name.
25:35Increase in us true religion.
25:37Nourish us with all goodness.
25:40And of your great mercy keep us in the safe.
25:43Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
25:46Amen.
25:52May the Lord bless us and keep us from all evil.
25:56Bringing us to everlasting life.
26:00Amen.