Luke 14:10-34

10 Compare Pro_25:6-7.

12 The pure joy of giving is largely lost when it degenerates into a trade. Yet it seems from this that we cannot give without being recompensed. If we give to get we may, indeed, be disappointed, but if we give with the single thought of blessing others, we are doubly repaid. There is the happiness that attends the giving, and the repayment in the resurrection. The grasping gift gets but little that is worth while. It defeats itself. The gracious gift gains all that it seems to forego and brings happiness to the recipient, to the giver, and to God.

13 Compare Neh_8:10-12.

15-21 Compare Mat_22:1-10; Pro_9:1-5.

15 This remark seems to be an adroit attempt to turn the conversation into a safer and more comfortable channel. But this man was probably one of the lawyers or Pharisees (there were no others present) who was refusing the invitation to God's great dinner. Thence the Lord takes him up, and suggests that the happiness of eating in the kingdom is only for those who come. The picture He draws is in striking contrast with the feast He was attending. All who were invited came to this feast and deemed it an honor to be present. No poor or crippled or blind or lame were admitted, except the dropsical man, and he was dismissed before the feasting began, though he no longer was a cripple. The great dinner of the kingdom will be quite the opposite of this. The men of substance refused the invitation. The scribes, lawyers, and Pharisees would not come and they will know nothing of the happiness of those who eat bread in the kingdom. But the outcasts, those whom the proud religionists would spurn from their table, these will enjoy the happiness which comes from tasting God's provision and plenty. The rejection of the invitation is a plain intimation of our Lord's rejection by the influential leaders of Israel, the self-righteous, who thought they needed no repentance. They were not hungry; they felt no necessity. They were busy in acquiring the land of their poorer countrymen by purchase, or they were getting control of more acreage by adding to their oxen, for the land was allotted to each man according to his ability to farm it. They were laying up treasures on earth. They had no ear for the invitation and shaIl have no place in the kingdom.

23 Compare Mar_16:15.

23 There is only one slave here, consequently we must limit the scope of this parable to our Lord's ministry. He never went to the nations outside the land, but He did reach the Samaritans and the Syro-Phoenician woman, who were outside the narrow pale of ultra-Judaism.

24 Compare Act_13:46.

25 This saying has proved a stumbling stone to many, and it is usual to tone down the word "hating" to some milder term. But it is the same word which undoubtedly means hate in other connections. The solution of the difficulty lies in the tense of the verbs. It is not a saying for all time, especially not for the present, but was applicable only during those closing days of His ministry when His disciples were to withstand the opposition of their loved ones, and the seduction of their own souls, which would shrink from the suffering in which faithfulness to Christ would involve them. It is only in this connection that the hate was to be exercised. It is its scope, rather than its intensity, which was limited. Such an attitude toward our relatives is utterly foreign to the spirit of grace which pervades the present.

26 Compare Deu_13:6-11; Deu_33:9; Mat_10:37-38; Rev_12:11.

28 Compare Pro_24:27.

28-33 The leaving of all possessions (above their allotments of land) was another special requirement, in view of the coming kingdom.

34 Holding on to possessions or compromising with those dear to them at such a time would make them like insipid salt, quite useless for the purpose for which it Is designed.