Stage 1: Getting To Know Jesus Stage 1: Getting To Know Jesus Stage 1: Getting To Know Jesus

Let’s continue to look at this dinner party in Luke 14 because Jesus is about to teach something that has never been taught in human history. Jesus watched very carefully as each of the invited dinner guests arrived and where they sat at the table. Everyone at this party was part of the elite of society. Once Jesus healed the sick man, he left, and Jesus was left with a group of elitists who just watched him break the rules of society. So, Jesus tells them a little story.

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. 

To understand this story completely, you need to understand the culture of the moment again. In the Ancient World, people with money were respected. In other words, MEN. People without money were basically discarded. Women were thought of as property. The sick were outcasts.

In Jewish culture, women were the poorest, and they were expected to stay on their man’s property. Women’s identities were tied to the men in their lives.

In Roman Law, parents were to raise all healthy males but only the firstborn females; any others were disposable at the parent's discretion. A First-Century letter from a solider to his pregnant wife reads,

Even the great Aristotle wrote that the inequality of masters and slavery was the “natural order of things.”

So, when Jesus told this story, implying that everyone matters to God and this sick guy has the same value as those guys sitting in that room, MINDS BLOWN!!! When Jesus said another time, “let the women and little children come to me,” people did not fully grasp it because Jesus was saying everyone is valuable and has worth. We take it for granted but NOBODY, seriously NOBODY, had ever taught those things. 

One of Jesus’ followers named Paul, wrote:

“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 3:28

According to Historian Thomas Cahill, this was the first statement of equality in human literature.

Many people believe that the equality movement today is a relatively modern idea. However, Jesus started it over 2,000 years ago in an unnamed religious leader's house when a man that culture said had no value came to see him. Jesus showed him that he mattered and was worthwhile.

Scripture References: Luke 14:1-14, Galatians 3: 28