Luke 14:15-24: What It Doesn't Mean (part two, as an example of false teaching)

Make sure you read part one first.  The text of Luke 14:15-24 is there too, to which you can refer.

Origen, third century patristic, developed a system of allegorical interpretation of scripture, and is called the father of it.  Without relying on his writings, many today still follow his methods by spiritualizing God's Word.  Roman Catholicism took advantage by using the same tactic to read into the Bible many new doctrines, using certain passages especially as proof texts.

A subjective approach, allegorization allows someone to make a text mean what he wants.  He might start with what he'd like the Bible to say or perhaps defend his own thinking by finding a passage to say it. This changes God's Word as much as adding or taking away from the Words, maybe worse. Sometimes you have men teach a right interpretation from slightly varied words and their preaching is exponentially better than men who have all the correct words, but treat them like play-doh.

Many who allegorize also practice a position on continuationism, where the Holy Spirit "gave" that interpretation to him -- told him what it said -- so that it can't be questioned either.  If someone questions it, he is challenging "Holy Spirit preaching" or Holy Spirit enduement.  This is worse in damage than believing that sign gifts are for today.  On top of this often exists a view of pastoral authority that says the critic is "touching God's anointed" or usurping authority.  This has it's parallels with Roman Catholicism too, because the preacher becomes a little pope in his given situation.  All this lends itself toward the worst kind of preaching.

Very often, people think twisting scripture like above is better than accurate exegesis, because of the fervor or style in which it was delivered.  Unction is perceived by the yelling and then affected emotions of his audience.  Someone present might say he manipulated people, but the crowd has been trained to judge this as the Holy Spirit, again characteristic of this continuationist belief.  If it's Bible and what the passage says, it's said to be dead, but if it is filled with stories while slaughtering the text, it's alive.  At the end of the mess, many say, "That was good."  Can anything be more evil?

People in the pew who hear these perversions judge it to be good preaching.  Then they hear exactly what a passage says and they think it isn't any good.  This shows where discernment goes, and why unbiblical teachings and practices will easily get past these people.  When they go to study their Bible, and find it says something different, they reject it for the party line of the group.  The leadership doesn't help them learn how to understand the Bible, but helps them learn a tradition that is backed by fallacies that can't really be called exegetical ones, because little exegesis was attempted. They wouldn't know exegesis if it bit them on the nose.

Then when you question the wrong preaching, you're also causing division and maybe even trying to split the church.  If you question it from afar, you are intervening in matters that are solely for that church, undermining its authority and preacher.  Surely you've got sinister motives too -- you couldn't be doing it because you love them, even though nothing is more dastardly than what is happening to them.  Your love is called hatred, so love too a casualty.

I still want you to know.  I'm not going to play the game.  I am not going to sit by, while people who pose as though they respect the Word of God, more than anyone, "especially more than those Bible corruptors who want to take away your King James."  If someone really loves the King James, then he should be careful with it and preach what it says, instead of perverting it.

People who preach like this as a practice shouldn't be preaching, and yet there are colleges where it is standard fare, what is heard on a regular basis.  The power is in the message of a passage, not in the formulation of a sermon that doesn't communicate what a passage says.

You might attend a conference today where someone preaches a passage, and most people "amen" often and loudly, and then someone else stands up and preaches something from the same passage entirely different, and the people "amen" that too, as if two contradictory meanings were completely acceptable.  That defines a concept of unity in most places today.  Very often the thinking is that God gave the first man his message and gave the second man his, so who are we to question it?  It's no wonder the world often thinks churches are a joke whose doctrine is silly.  They often don't believe it themselves enough for others to see it as worthwhile to believe.  They see the right meaning as optional, not anything to sweat over.  Imagine if brain surgeons or pilots performed that same way.

An important principle for right interpretation of scripture is understanding a passage like those hearing it in that day.  Jesus wasn't talking to you and me in Luke 14.  He was talking to Pharisees. His story there could apply to us, but it can't mean something different to us than it meant to them. That story shouldn't be preached like Jesus was talking to us.  He wasn't.

What Luke 14:15-24 Doesn't Say

Just a week ago, I read a publication with the following viewpoint of Luke 14:15-24.  I think there are many others who believe the same way, so we should consider it a sample.  The author wrote that the Lord in Jesus' story was God -- so far so good.  He goes downhill from there. He says that the servant was you and me.  That's not correct, because you and I didn't invite Israel's leaders into the kingdom and salvation like the Old Testament prophets.   You and I couldn't invite the nation Israel in general up to the time that Jesus was telling that parable.  He says that the supper is salvation, and that would be good too, if that's what he really believed.

Jesus' story is illustrating truth.  The poor and the maimed and the halt and the blind picture something.  They aren't physically poor and maimed and halt and blind.  A literal interpretation requires understanding figurative speech.  Parables use symbolism.  That's the point of them being a story.  Remember, the supper is salvation.  I agreed with that.  That is figurative.  You don't say, the supper is salvation, but the poor are the poor.  They are both figurative.

Jesus had been invited to the occasion where He told this story, because the Pharisees wanted to trap Him (14:1-2).  Jesus exposed their pride, because they prioritized an ox fallen in a ditch more than the man made in the image of God, Jesus would heal (14:4), who had dropsy.  They were hypocrites. They said they loved God's law, but they didn't love their neighbors, the second table of the law.   This is also seen in a story Jesus tells about a wedding (14:6-14).  Their positions were for money, oxen, and relationships, popularity and power, which was sitting in the best seats of a wedding.   They weren't humble.  They weren't poor in spirit, even as seen in the implication of one of them in v. 15.  They would not deny themselves in order to follow the Messiah, Jesus their King.

Jesus refers back to his earlier illustrations (14:4 and 14:6-14) in the excuses of vv. 18-20.  Their lack of humility would keep them out of the kingdom, but there were people who did see their poverty in Israel, a Jewish remnant.  This is not Jesus saying, direct your evangelistic efforts to poor neighborhoods and poor people on a socio-economic level.  Jesus would be contradicting His own commission, that ended every gospel account, to preach the gospel to everyone.

The author of the article focuses on the word "bring" from v. 21.  Even though he says the supper is salvation, he targets "bring" as very instructive.  If the slave is "bringing" someone to salvation, then "bring" is not a literal bringing, as in, picked up physically from one place and taken to some other location.   He makes a point that the poor and maim, etc., didn't have the monetary means of the first group, who rejected the invitation, so that they could have gotten there on their own.   Meanwhile, he says the maim and the halt and the blind would need to be brought, given a ride, because they didn't have the means of getting there.

Jesus wasn't telling someone they needed to physically pick someone up and bring them somewhere. This isn't anything that Jesus or the apostles did.  If that's what someone was supposed to do, they all missed it.  Jesus obeyed everything the Father told Him to do, and Jesus didn't do anything like it.  He went to everyone and preached.  If they rejected it, like an entire Samaritan city, it wasn't because they didn't have the money to listen.  He went from Galilee to Judea to Samaria to Perea and to Caesaria-Philippi.  He went to them and preached to them.

The idea of Jesus' teaching wasn't, let's see if the banquet hall could be filled up with rich people first, and if they don't want that, go to maimed people, and if there aren't enough of those, then get the out-of-towners. The idea is that anyone who would come, could come.   The audience of Jesus' story was the first group, the ones who didn't want it.  Most Jews didn't want it, not because of their socio-economic level, but because they were too proud -- they were not poor in spirit.  Neither is it that the latter two would need to be brought in physically, because they don't have the monetary means to do so.  The supper is salvation, the kingdom.  We agreed on that, remember. How does someone "bring" someone to salvation, to the kingdom?  He does it by preaching the gospel.  The invitation into the kingdom is the gospel, because someone gets into the kingdom, is saved, by believing in Jesus Christ.  When you get that wrong, because you make "bring" mean something other than that, you have encouraged people to disobey the Bible.

The essay said that the church tried to get people who could drive themselves to church in their own cars, and that group said "no," so, like in Luke 14:21, the church instead went out and picked up poor people, who couldn't make it on their own (many of them actually can come on their own, but they send their children instead).  The meaning of the supper shifted from "salvation" to the gathering of a church.  And then the author said that "compel" was to use high pressure or to do anything that is right in order to see people saved, which would include offering food at a rescue mission, medicine by a missionary doctor, or hot chocolate or a trinket to persuade children to get into a vehicle.  The story, however, doesn't mean any of that, and it can't, because none of that too was what we see Jesus actually do.

Very commonly in fundamentalism, among independent Baptists, basically revivalists, the banquet has become the meeting of the church, "bring" is give someone a ride in a vehicle, the maimed and blind are poor children, and compel is a bribe, a fleshly allurement that especially children like better than the gospel itself.  This now includes a certain type of music, puppet shows, prizes, and big promotions.  None of those are what Luke 14:15-24 mean.  The author of the article then portrayed those who said something different than this physically bringing and compelling interpretation -- the high pressure of hot chocolate and trinkets -- as straight from the devil and that people needed to stop listening to Satan and get out there and use this tactic.  He also called this described strategy, the Great Commission.  It wasn't.  It isn't.  He also said almost anyone can do it, and then equated the numbers who come with positive responses to the invitation with the benefits of the "high pressure."

No, the supper is salvation.  Salvation is of eternal value, and it is the motive.  Someone comes to the banquet because he thinks the banquet is better than whatever else is out there to distract him.  No one has to travel by bus or be offered medicine or a meal to get it.  It's free.  The lord wasn't charging for someone to come. If someone knows its value, he doesn't need something of lesser value to talk him into it. "Bring" is preaching the gospel.  The invitation is not to church, but to Christ, to the kingdom, to heaven.  Can anyone do it?  I've found that only saved people will do it, and because churches have a lot of unsaved people, they invent methods that anyone can do, even unsaved people.  It's true that almost anyone can make invitations and give out enticements.

Consider the irony.  A person is invited to church and he says he will not come.  He doesn't like church.  He likes television or a football game or his sleep better.  If this was what Jesus was talking about, which He wasn't, then we should just go to the next person, who really would like church.  That would take this false interpretation to its rightful application, but no.  No, if he says, I will not come, with all the modern-day excuses, the slave, supposedly you and I, just offers him something other than the banquet, the supper, to entice him.  "I know you don't like church enough to come just for church, so how about a kite or a sno-cone or a rodeo or a trip?"  I've bought me five yoke of oxen.  "OK, well how about I offer you six yoke, then will you come?"  What I'm saying is that not only is this not what Jesus was teaching, but it is encouraging the opposite.

I recognize that people see these types of perversion of scripture as sort of harmless or even worse, helpful, because they can be used then to get people to do something "good."  Instead of preaching the gospel to everyone, people invite people to church, so instead of obeying the Bible, they practice a man-invented thing, not only not seen in scripture anywhere, but taught against (cf. 1 Cor 1-3, etc.). It results in thousands and thousands of false professions, the watering down of the gospel, and the gospel itself not getting to everyone, because they've replaced preaching it with this alternative method, spawned from a perversion of God's Word.  People start counting false professions as real and then adjusting their gospel message to fit the method.  All of this is occurring all over and justified with this kind of perversion of scripture.

Wake up.  This is serious.