TEXT: Luke 14:1-24

SUBJECT: Luke #55: Why the Self-Righteous Won’t Go to Heaven

In today’s Bible-reading, we read four stories. The first one is about some Pharisees who criticized the Lord Jesus Christ for healing on the Sabbath. The second story is about men who wanted the best seats at important dinner parties. The third is about showing hospitality—and who you ought to show it to. And the fourth is a parable about some men who are too busy to attend their neighbor’s feast.

At first glance, the stories don’t have much in common. I wonder how often they’ve been preached as one sermon? But the closer you look at them, the more occurs to you that they’re all about the same thing. And the thing they’re about is important.

What they’re about speaks directly to the leading men of Israel in the First Century and also to many church-going people today. The stories tell us why the self-righteous won’t go to heaven.

That rings a bell, doesn’t it? Just last week, we read "So the first will be last". That is, the respectable, law-admiring Jews of that day won’t join Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the Dinner Party in Heaven. But that people "from the east and west, north and south will". Publicans, harlots—and even Gentiles—get into heaven, but the self-righteous don’t!

That’s what the stories are about and why they spoke to the Pharisees then—and why they speak to you and me—now.

If you had to make up a list of the worst sins in the world, what you put at the top? Murder, treason, child-molesting? These are all hideous sins, of course. But where would self-righteousness be? It wouldn’t occur to most people—it’s a bit of a nuisance, maybe a weakness, but it’s not that bad, is it?

Our stories say it is. And they’re not alone. There is no sin more often or more harshly condemned in the Gospels than the sin of self-righteousness. The men guilty of it are compared to whitewashed tombs full of dead bodies covered by wiggling and hungry maggots. It’s not a pretty picture. It wasn’t meant to be. To Jesus Christ, that’s how bad self-righteousness is.

I’m getting ahead of myself, let’s get back to the stories.

The first takes place in the home of a leading Pharisee. The Lord has been invited to dinner, but the host does not love Him. He has Him over so that he and his friends can catch Him doing something wrong on the Sabbath.

It’s not long until the Lord accommodates them. A man comes in with dropsy which is the disease we call edema. Often caused by congestive heart failure, it results in an abnormal retention of water. The visible symptom is swelling—especially around the ankles. Imagine a normal sized man with ankles twenty inches around! Needless to say, the disease is painful, debilitating, and may be life-threatening!

The man stumbles his way to the Lord, hoping for a cure. But before the Lord does anything, He asks "permission"—

They all think it isn’t, but nobody says a word. The Lord turns to the suffering man and heals Him with a touch. The man goes home rejoicing and the Lord wheels around on the Pharisees with an angry question,

They all do it, of course—and rightly so. But, seeing the irony of their position, no one says a word.

This names the first thing wrong with the self-righteous: The self-righteous are not righteous!

They claim to love the Law of God, but they don’t keep it. If it’s wrong to help a man on the Sabbath, it must also be wrong to help an ox or a donkey on that Day. Which they all do!

If it’s wrong to break a minor detail of the Sabbath, then it must also be wrong to break a major law of God. Which they all do! What Law? It’s the Second Commandment,

Which they plainly didn’t do, for if they had been sick, they would have wanted a healing on the Sabbath, which they grudged the sick man in the story.

The self-righteous, therefore, are not righteous because there is no bigger sin than the one they’re most guilty of!

Self-righteousness was at the heart of the Pharisee’s problem. And, it’s what made him so cruel to others--

But self-righteousness is not unique to the Pharisee. Christians can be guilty of it too. In the book of Revelation, the Lord bawls out a church—a church!—for saying,

Are you self-righteous? No one admits to it, but we all know a lot of people who are—so somebody must be! And maybe the somebody is…you. If you don’t think so, then you can be sure it’s you. For nothing blinds a man more than self-righteousness.

The self-righteous are not righteous. In finding the specks in everyone else’s eyes, they cannot see the beam in their own eyes. Hypocrite—the Lord says—take the 2X4 out of your own eye and then worry about the particles of dust in the eyes of other people!

The second and third stories are a bit of advice the Lord offers. He knows they all like to be noticed and honored—especially in public! Nothing pleased them more than getting a seat next to a very important person! They all competed for it.

Which He tells them to quit doing. Take the lowest seat, He says, and maybe the host will ask you to move up. That will be a great honor.

The other thing He says here is about inviting people to dinner. The Pharisees were known for their hospitality—but they weren’t really hospitable. For the only ones they invited over were the ones who would return the favor. Thus, they got the credit of hospitality without paying for it. If I invite you to dinner every Friday night and you have me over every Saturday night, it evens out. I haven’t sacrificed anything to help you.

What does this say about the self-righteous? It says they’re phony because they want the praise of men more than the praise of God.

This is what self-righteousness aims for! And what could be less righteous than craving the applause of other people while not caring about God’s approval?

Nothing is more revolting to God than self-seeking; there is no way you can be less like our Lord than to seek the praise of men. The Pharisees did this all the time. Their prayers, their fasting, their charity were "All to be seen of men" and the Lord adds: that’s the only reward they will get.

Why is self-righteousness so bad? Because it aims no higher than the approval of man—feeling good about yourself or getting high fives from other people or maybe putting yourself in a position where—you think—you can look down on others who don’t measure up to your standards.

Righteousness is God-centered. Self-righteousness is self-centered. And, self-centeredness is another word for unrighteousness. Our Lord once said,

Just a few lines later, the Lord shows how seeking the praise of men is the most unrighteous—that is, lawbreaking—thing you can do:

It’s not hard to connect the dots: Self-righteousness breaks every Law of God which makes you as unrighteous as you can be.

The last story is a parable the Lord told to the men sitting at the dinner table that night. It was occasioned by someone saying a good and true thing: "Blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God!"

The Lord picks it up from there. A good man threw a dinner party for all his friends. When it came time to eat, he sent his messengers around to get them. But nobody wanted to come. One friend wouldn’t come because he had to break in a new team of oxen; another stayed away because he had to go look over a new field he just bought; the third wouldn’t come because—well, he was still on his honeymoon!

The messengers came back alone and this made the host plenty mad! The table was set, the food was cooked, the musicians were tuned-up and nobody’s here! He ordered the messengers to go out and round up anyone they could find: the poor, the crippled, the blind—everyone was welcome.

Or, not quite everyone. The only ones who couldn’t come were the ones who were first invited. They had their chance and they lost it!

The host, of course, is God. The Dinner Party is His Kingdom. The first people invited were men like the ones sitting around the table that night—Law-praising Israelites. But they wouldn’t come, and so, now the others will be let in: people like Lazarus and Mary Magdalene, and, later the dirty, stinking Gentiles.

What was wrong with the Israelites? They were self-righteous. They proved it by not caring about God and not valuing His grace.

But of course! It cannot be otherwise. A self-righteous man cannot care about God, for if he did, he would be humbled in the dust by His Divine majesty and holiness. And he cannot value God’s grace because, after all, he doesn’t need it. He may say he needs it, loves it, depends on it, but deep down, he thinks he’s pretty good without it.

That is the heart of self-righteousness. God and His grace are nice add-ons, but they’re not necessary to my holiness or my happiness. But the broken man knows better. He can only beat his breast and cry,

There is no sin more respectable than self-righteousness. Or more deadly. It’s a hideous, disgusting, and damnable thing because: (1) it breaks the Law of God, (2) it's selfish, and (3) it could not care less for God or His grace.

It’s no wonder that the deformed and the retarded are seated at the Royal Table and the self-righteous are locked out. For it is they—the proud—who are disfigured and wrong in the head.

Are you self-righteous? No one admits to it, but are you?

You are if:

• You look down on other people and wonder why they don’t measure up to you.

• You’re quick to criticize and harsh with the faults of other people.

• Your confessions of sin are formal and unfelt most of the time.

• Your apologies are technical—and not real and from the heart.

• If your salvation doesn’t surprise you every day!

The only cure for self-righteousness is in Christ. Look at His life and you’ll have no grounds for feeling smug. What have we done or suffered compared to Christ! The cleanest man is a leper in His Holy Presence.

Look to Him for forgiveness and for humbling. Even the self-righteous can be forgiven—and will be—when they humble themselves before the Lord. For, when the world passes away, the Word will remain,