He's Coming for The Bad Shepherds!
Luke 14:22-24
"And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’ And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.’"
So many excuses. One man buys a house, but he can't come to the Lord’s banquet because he hasn't seen the house yet. What sort of man buys a house sight unseen? Another is a cattleman who buys some cattle sight unseen, and he wants to go and test them before coming to the Lord's feast. And still another must first go to his wife. Why didn't he bring his wife to the banquet?
So many excuses. Commercial grade excuses really, practiced.
As Benjamin Franklin said: "the man who is good at making excuses is seldom good for anything else."
The excuses these men give; buying a house sight unseen, inspecting cattle, or tending to a wife, do seem flimsy when you break them down. They’re almost absurd, aren’t they? A house uninspected, cattle untested, a wife left behind instead of brought along, it’s as if they’re reaching for anything to avoid the invitation. The master in the parable doesn’t ask for much, just presence, just a willingness to sit at the table. And yet, that seems to be the hardest thing for these invitees.
And so, the Master leaves the dinner and goes himself out into the streets. And multitudes are drawn to him. Not just sending servants, but going into the streets to call the people in. The excuses from the first invitees fade away, replaced by this wave of the unexpected, the outcasts, the curious, the desperate, all coming because He’s there among them. The ones who made excuses showed their hearts were elsewhere, tied to houses, cattle, spouses, but even the ones who showed up, aren’t automatically in the clear. Motives matter. Were they there for the food, the status, the clout? It’s not enough to just RSVP; it’s about why you’re walking through the door.
Jesus stepping out into the streets, it feels like He’s raising the stakes. He’s not just hosting a dinner anymore. He’s showing that loving Him means following Him beyond the banquet hall, into the raw, unpolished world. And that love, has to eclipse everything; religion as a ritual, expectations of reward, fandom for the spectacle, even self-interest. Luke 14:26 backs this up hard. Loving Him more than family, more than your own life. The multitudes might be drawn to Him, but how many stick around when the cross comes into view? The banquet is a test, it’s almost like a parable within a parable. He’s watching who shows up, who doesn’t, and why. And even the "good" guests, angling for power or prestige, miss the point if they’re not there for Him alone.
And now Luke's gospel lays out the terms for counting the cost of discipleship. He shares a parable about a tower and counting the cost of building it. And another parable about a king who is engaged in battle and he first sits down to seek conditions of peace because he counted the numbers of soldiers and determined that he was on the losing side.
Luke 14:34-35
"Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
The point of this whole thread is that following Jesus isn’t a casual RSVP to the Master's banquet; it’s a calculated commitment. The tower builder who doesn’t count the cost ends up with a half-finished ruin, a laughingstock. The king who doesn’t size up his army risks annihilation. Then comes that haunting bit about salt in Luke 14:34-35. It’s such a stark capstone. Salt’s only good if it keeps its bite, its purpose. Lose that, and it’s not even worth tossing into the dirt or the dung heap, it’s just trash. You as a child of God MUST have a preserving effect upon our society. In fact, I would say that the festering wicked spirit of our current society is a testimony against the Church. Salt that’s lost its bite isn’t just a personal failing; it’s a societal letdown. The church should be adding flavor to our culture that is good and righteous. And especially important is the fact that salt has the capacity to make people thirsty.
Is your walk with Jesus doing likewise? The Church isn’t just supposed to sit there quietly looking pretty or lofty; it’s meant to season the culture with something good, something righteous that stands out, like a dash of spice on a bland dish. Salt doesn’t just make you notice it, it makes you want more, drives you to drink. If our walk with Jesus isn’t stirring that kind of longing in others, not just for Him but for something beyond the stale status quo, then we’re missing the mark. Beyond the stale, corporate religious establishment, and what they've been selling for centuries now. It’s like the Church, at times, has been peddling a pre-packaged, flavorless version of faith, more about keeping the institution humming than shaking up the culture or stirring up thirst for Jesus.
Centuries of that can turn salt into something that just sits on the shelf, caked up and useless, instead of doing what it’s meant to do, preserve, season, provoke. So Jesus provokes. What happens next is exactly that. Jesus runs headlong into the religious establishment with his unwelcome dinner guests. The banquet has now gone out into the streets and is provoking those who wouldn't come.
Luke 15:1-2
Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, "This man receives sinners and eats with them."
Four groups are gathered here now; the tax collectors and sinners, the Pharisees and Scribes. And the elite religious leaders are murmuring. Jesus is proclaiming a gospel of glory and the religious leaders think he's teaching blasphemy. It’s a total reversal of the banquet parable. The ones who wouldn’t come, the respectable, excuse-making crowd, are now the ones scowling as Jesus dines with the riffraff.
What should these "righteous men", these Pharisees and Scribes, what should their response be to seeing Jesus drawing sinners to himself and receiving them into glory and righteousness?
Instead of grumbling, imagine if they’d leaned in with awe, not judgment. These "righteous men" claimed to know God’s heart, spent their lives parsing the Law, shouldn’t they have recognized the real thing when it showed up? Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners wasn’t a scandal to sweep under the rug; it was the banquet gone live, in the highways-and-hedges, it's Jesus' call in action. Their response could’ve been wonder; "This is what God has been promising, mercy, not sacrifice, the lost being found."
They should’ve been the first to cheer, to join the table, to see their own saltiness restored by pitching in, welcoming them in, not gatekeeping. If they’d truly loved God’s law, they would have seen it fulfilled in Jesus’ embrace of the broken.
This suggests to me a stark implication of the Church today. It brings to mind an age-old paradigm.
Ezekiel 34:1-5
The word of the Lord came to me: "Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Woe to you shepherds of Israel who only take care of yourselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and when they were scattered, they became food for all the wild animals."
This Word from God rings true even today. It’s like a spotlight swinging from ancient Israel to the Pharisees and then straight onto the Church today. A scattered flock, prey to every wild thing out there. It’s a brutal picture, and when you lay it next to Jesus dining with sinners while the Pharisees grumble, the parallel is unmistakable. If the Church is more about self-preservation, polished buildings and curating their museums of relics and art, their cushy programs, all their insider perks, than chasing the lost or healing the broken, it’s those same bad shepherds all over again.
When the Church fails to be salt, fails to provoke and preserve, the flock scatters, and the world’s wild animals; greed, despair, whatever, feast on the little children.
Take heed "Church". You've been weighed and found wanting. And now the Lord will do the work you were meant to achieve.
Ezekiel 34:10-11
This is what the Sovereign Lord says: "I am against the shepherds and will hold them accountable for my flock. I will remove them from tending the flock so that the shepherds can no longer feed themselves. I will rescue my flock from their mouths, and it will no longer be food for them." For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: "I myself will search for my sheep and look after them."
The religious judges are being judged. God’s not messing around. He’s calling out the shepherds, flipping the script, and stepping in Himself. This echoes in Daniel 5 too, that moment when the writing’s on the wall for a kingdom that’s lost its way. He's coming soon for his bride. His banquet is ready. It’s a wake-up call for the Church today. Where it’s drifted into self-serving, God’s ready to bypass it and do the job Himself.
Keep watch!