10/12/2025

17th Sunday after Trinity

Text: Lk 14:1-11

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Jesus says, “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

I

 Pride thinks it can do no wrong. In our Gospel Jesus is having dinner with a group of very proud people. He is at the house of one of the rulers of the Pharisees and they’re out to get him because they despise how Jesus keeps the Sabbath. The Pharisees were proud. They believed they were righteous before God by keeping the law. They were convinced their interpretation of the law was the best and their customs surrounding it the most pious. Jesus, however, did not feel constrained to keep their made-up customs. That angered them greatly. In their pride, they try to trap Jesus. They bring a man with dropsy, a terrible disease, to the dinner because they want Jesus to heal him so they can accuse Jesus of breaking the Sabbath.

But Jesus sees through their trap and exposes their hypocrisy. Jesus asks them a simple question that exposes their insincerity—“Which of you, having an ox or donkey that has fallen into a pit, will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?” and they could not answer him these things.” They could not answer because they were caught. Although they held to a rigorous system of keeping the Sabbath and wanted to enforce it, they made exceptions for themselves in times of emergency. But there’s the rub—in their pride, they wanted to be the ones who judged which exceptions were acceptable. They couldn’t stand the idea that Jesus, or anyone else, would make an exception they didn’t approve of.

When sinful pride takes hold in the heart, it leads you to think that you are far more important than you really are. The Pharisees are an example of one path pride takes. The false confidence of pride often leads to works-righteousness. It did with the Pharisees. They thought they truly kept God’s law and were sinless before Him. They thought they were the experts who had the final say. They thought they did no wrong before the law, and in their pride, they thought they could do no wrong.  They couldn’t see the malice of their own tactics, the cold-heartedness of using a sick man to tear down another. They thought they were justified in all they did.

Now, we don’t like the hypocrisy of the Pharisees at all in our day. We live in an age that hates petty and hypocritical rule-following. But the same sinful pride infects us. So many today think like the Pharisees they can do wrong, but our pride takes a different path. The Pharisees thought they could do no wrong because they kept God’s law. But in our pride, we think we can do no wrong because we’re above God’s law. We think we can do as please no matter what God says. We transgress every boundary He sets up in His law and imagine He won’t be angered.

We do so because we don’t fear Him. You probably know the poem, “’Twas the Night Before Christmas.” It describes Saint Nick coming down the chimney to deliver presents:

Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;

That is how many think of God—a jolly little elf bringing goodies and gifts. You need not fear him. But a wink of his of eye and twist of his head will give you to know you have nothing to dread. The Scriptures paint no such picture of God. But in pride, we think we know God better than the Scriptures. We dismiss any warning in Scripture about the consequences for breaking His commandments with the confident claim that “He’s loving.” He’d never punish us. We know better than the word. We can do as we please and He’ll always be there like St Nick with a sack full of goodies and gifts.

That is the pride of our age. Nowhere is this more apparent than in our transgressions against the fifth and sixth commandments. The fifth commandment says, “You shall not murder.” But in only fifty years, we have killed sixty-three million children by abortion in our country. That’s an incomprehensible number of people. This tragedy should fill us with terror, but we shrug it off instead. The sixth commandment says, “You shall not commit adultery.” It protects the holiness of marriage between one man and one woman and forbids sexual intercourse outside of marriage. But what is promoted in our day? The pride movement which celebrates perversion. Against whatever God or nature teaches, we claim the right to do whatever we wish to our bodies without any fear of God. But our contempt for the sixth commandments comes even closer to home. Ask yourself this: how many people do you know who ruined their marriages? Almost half of all marriages in the US end in divorce. And who in your family has been married the traditional way, according to the word of God? Almost seventy percent of people fornicate before getting married. Why would we as a people ever do and tolerate such things condemned so severely in God’s word?

One word—pride. Sinful pride. We think we are not beholden to Him, but God is beholden to us. He should give us gifts and goodies but expect nothing from us in return. To our great shame, few people seem concerned—but we should be. Jesus is concerned about pride. He warns the Pharisees about pride with a parable. Jesus says, “When you go to a wedding feast, do not sit down in the best place, lest one more honorable than you be invited by him, and he who invited you and him come and say to you, ‘Give place to this man, and then you begin with shame to take the lowest place.’ But when you are invited, go sit down I the lowest place, so that when he who invited you comes he may say to you, “Friend, come up higher.’ Then you will have glory in the presence of those who sit at the table with you. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled.”

It’s ridiculous to sit down in the best man’s spot at a wedding because you think you’re so important. You will be asked to move. Jesus’ point to the Pharisees is that they’re proud presumption before God is absurd. Their works righteousness has not earned them a place front and center. Their pride brings them nothing but shame and punishment. God humbles the proud, either in this life or the next. Jesus’ warning is for us, too. Whoever exalts himself before God will be humbled. If we continue to exalt ourselves in pride, we will be humbled. God sent the flood on the unbelieving world in ancient times. He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for their perversions. He sent foreign nations to conquer Israel because they turned to false gods and sacrificed their children to demons. What will He do to a proud people like us who kill babies and defile the marriage bed? He will humble us.

II

This is Jesus’ urgent warning for us—If you exalt yourself, you will be humbled. But Jesus also calls us to something else. He says, “He who humbles himself will be exalted.”  Jesus doesn’t call us to account because He wants to nit-pick. He wants us to change our heart and stop what we’re doing. He wants us to turn from the road pride takes and come back to Him. He wants to us to humble ourselves so that He can exalt us.

Here’s what the call to humble yourself entails. First, you must fear God. He is not St Nick. Look at the bulletin cover. That’s a better image of God. He is the Creator, awesome and powerful, and glorious in His holiness. Who would dare offend Him? Only the greatest fool blinded by pride. Second, you submit to God’s standard. That standard is His word. That means we do not kill babies, approve of homosexuality, or wink the eye at fornication. But we uphold life and sanctify the marriage bed because these things are good. We trust in the goodness of God’s ways. Life is a precious gift we hold no right to take because God gives life. Marriage holds blessings that perversion cannot express and fornication or cohabitation cannot grasp because God institutes and blesses nothing else than the lifelong union between one man and one woman. Sinful pride rebels against God’s ways, but Christian humility voices its love for God’s ways in the words of our psalm this morning—“Righteous are you, O Lord, and upright are your judgements.”

Third, to humble yourself means you repent. To repent means to feel sorrow for your sins and confess them. Your sins should make you feel ashamed—they really are shameful before God. The knowledge of our sins before God should quench the fire of pride and humble us. We ought to mourn and plead for mercy.

But when you humble yourself and confess your sins and seek His mercy, God exalts you. He forgives you your sins. Jesus always rebukes sin to expose it, and He exposes sin to rid us of it. He wants to deliver us from our sin, and He wants to strengthen us so that we will not fall into great sins again. So He died to pay for your sins. He has redeemed you from them with His blood. He has won true forgiveness for all your sins by His suffering, death, and His resurrection. He bestows that forgiveness freely. When you confess your sins, and plead for mercy He says, “Your sins are forgiven you. Go and sin no more.” You might carry great shame in your heart for things you’ve done in the past, but the Lord does not hold them against you. He forgives and remembers your sins no more. And He calls you to live life His way, in the riches of His grace and mercy. God withholds nothing from the humble He declares you to be a saint, someone who is holy. And He calls you to live as a saint, to share in His goodness, to walk in the blessing of His ways, and He gives you the strength to do so.

Pride might think of God as a harmless old man like jolly St Nick. But in humility, we learn from the Scriptures who God is. He is one to be feared—and praised. But look too above the altar. There is His Son who in deepest humility offered Himself up for you. Jesus, the man who suffered the torment, shame, and abasement you deserved is now exalted. He rose the third day. He sits enthroned on high, that you, a poor sinner might be exalted with Him. He has redeemed you from sin. He has sanctified you, made you holy. When you humble yourself in repentance and plead for mercy, He exalts you and says, “Friend, come up higher.”

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.