Money and the Logic of Grace

Welcome to Gospel in Life. Why does the Bible talk about money so much? How we think about and use our money is one of the most common subjects throughout Scripture, and the Bible tells us something striking. You cannot experience deep spiritual growth without putting your money and your attitude toward it in God's hands. Listen as Tim Keller shows us why generosity is not optional for Christians but a vital mark of authentic faith. Our Scripture reading tonight is from the book of Luke chapter 14 verses 7 through 24. When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honor at the table, he told them this parable, "When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, 'Give this man your seat.' Then humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. But when you are invited, take the lowest place so that when your host comes, he will say to you, 'Friend, move up to a better place.' Then you will be honored in the presence of all your fellow guests. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." Then Jesus said to his host, "When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors. If you do, they may invite you back, and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous." When one of those at the table with him heard this, he said to Jesus, "Blessed is the man who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God." Jesus replied, "A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests. At the time of the banquet, he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, 'Come, for everything is now ready.' But they, all alike, began to make excuses. The first said, 'I have just bought a field, and I must go and see it. Please excuse me.' Another said, 'I have just bought five yoke of oxen, and I am on my way to try them out. Please excuse me.' Still the other said, 'I just got married, so I can't come.' The servant came back and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and ordered his servant, 'Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town, and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.' 'Sir,' the servant said, 'what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.' Then the master told his servant, 'Go out to the roads and country lanes, and make them come in, so that my house will be full. I tell you, not one of those men who were invited will get to taste of my banquet.'" This is the word of the Lord. We're doing a short series in the month of June on the subject of how Christians ought to be looking at their money and their possessions. We're looking at what Luke says about it. Three of the passages we're looking at this month come from the Gospel of Luke, one next week from Acts, the book of Acts, which Luke also wrote, because Luke has so much to say about the subject. And we're choosing June to do this, because when you talk about money to a congregation, and when a minister talks about money to a congregation, and there's a campaign going on, or there's the end-of-the-year operating budget, where there are some special offerings, then when you talk about, 'Oh, see, you need to give to this,' it's actually natural for the listeners to concentrate on the this, on the cause, on the thing. Instead of sitting back and saying, 'Well, what does God want me to think about my money in general? What should my attitude be toward it? How should I relate my giving to my spending? How much should I spend on myself? How much should I give away?' That's what we want to look at here in the month of June, because there's so much in the Bible about it. So first of all, I actually only have two points to this sermon. Not three, no, two. Okay, so maybe, don't count on getting out early, but it's still two. The first point is that Jesus Christ in the middle of this chapter lays out an astonishing standard for sacrificial giving, absolutely astonishing, so astonishing that it will seem unreasonable to us. Then, that's point one. Secondly, I'm going to show how Jesus actually shows how reasonable that kind of giving is because of the logic of the gospel. So point one, an astonishing standard that Jesus lays out there for sacrificial giving from us, his people. Disciples. And then secondly, how he rationalizes it, how he grounds it in the logic of the gospel. So first of all, let's look at this amazing standard in the middle of the passage. He says, then Jesus said to his host, now who's the host? Jesus has been invited into the home of a very prominent man. It doesn't tell us that in the part that we read, but it's at the very beginning of the chapter. Jesus was invited to a big supper with lots of guests at a prominent home. And you see verse seven, it says, when he noticed the guests were picking places of honor at the table, so this was a typical supper in which people were trying to sit as close to the host as possible. And then Jesus says, when you give a lunch and a dinner, he says this to the host, do not invite your friends, your brothers, your relatives, or your rich neighbors. That's who's there. Now to understand what's going on, we have to give you some little background here. The Greco-Roman world operated on the patronage system. Now this isn't totally alien, because there's plenty of parts of the world that still do. The patronage system went like this. In every community, there were certain prominent wealthy individuals. And if you wanted to improve your station in life, move up at all, you had to make one of those people your patron. If that person was your patron, that person gave you loans, gave you gifts, open doors for you. But then you were part of their network. Patrons had networks of favorites. And a favorite was somebody who got favors from the patron. And the patron's network of favorites meant that patron could get a lot of things done in a community, because you had all these people that owed you. So you always got breaks on things, you always got, you know, things got done. Patrons could get a lot of things done in a community, because the slides, your favorites would grease the slides. Political favors, that kind of thing. When you had these suppers, that was what was going on. At the suppers, the people were trying to meet each other. You either were trying to sustain your place in life by the patrons and the favorites were getting together to sustain the relationship, or you're trying to get new ones. You're trying to meet new patrons. You were trying to move up the ladder. And therefore, the people who came to a supper were extremely important. You had to have rich neighbors. You had to have people at least at your level of society or better. And because of that, these were not just parties. They were extremely important. And they were extremely expensive. But that was all right, because you threw those parties, you had these supper parties, but you got the people there who you were already making deals with, and people who you were trying to incorporate into your network. And therefore, the party paid off. The party always paid for itself. It was very expensive, but a party paid for itself. It was fun, it was extensive, it was expensive, but it was fun, it was festive, but it also was, it paid for you. That was the system. Jesus Christ comes to this man who's a patron type and has the audacity to say, "When you give a lunch and a dinner, do not invite your friends, or your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors, the people who are there. If you do, they will invite you back, and they will repay you." Of course, that's how the patronage system worked. He says, "But here's what I want. Here's what I want my disciples to do. When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind, and you will be blessed." Now, first of all, what is Jesus saying? And secondly, what are the implications? First of all, what is He saying? At first sight, when you and I read it, it looks like He's saying, "Never have your friends over." Okay? So let's finish our sermon right there. Let us pray. Jesus says, "Never have your friends over." He says, "It says so. When you give a lunch and a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or sisters. Instead, you have to invite the poor." Now, you have to understand Semitic idioms. An idiom, as you all know, every language has an idiom, and an idiomatic expression makes sense to people inside the language, but when you translate it into another language, if that idiom doesn't operate in those other languages, then what actually happens is it makes no sense because you take it literally. And therefore, if you take that literally, it doesn't make much sense. But if you would like another example of this same idiom, later on in the chapter, in fact, chapter 14, verse 26, Jesus says, "You must hate your father and mother if you want to be my disciple." Same thing, "Hate your father and mother and follow me." You say, "Oh, really? What does that mean? Could it mean that Jesus was saying, you remember those Ten Commandments, that one about, "Forget that?" You think that's what he's saying? Can the Commandments forget it? No, of course not. Well, what's he saying? It's an idiom, and what he's actually saying is, even though he says, "Follow me and hate your father and mother," what he really means is not that you shouldn't love your father and mother, nor is he saying you love your father and mother too much, or you can love your father and mother too much. All he's saying is, "You have to love me way more, far more, massively more, so much so that your love for me makes your love for your father and mother look like hate." So when the idiom says, "Don't love your father and mother, love me," what it really means is love me far more, not that you shouldn't love your father and mother. And when it says, "Don't give parties for your friends. Don't do the things necessary to maintain your place in life. Don't do recreation. Don't do entertainment. Don't ever go out to eat. Don't buy nice clothes so that you're able to maintain your place in society." See, those are all equivalents for today, what these suppers were, equivalents for today. He's not saying, "Don't do that." He's saying, "You're giving to charity and ministry. You're giving to ministry by which you give people spiritual life, so people find faith. You're giving to charity so people get physical life because they're fed when they're hungry. You're giving to ministry and charity should be massively more than the money you spend on entertainment, recreation, your nice clothes, your vacations. All that is really what these suppers represent. They didn't have vacations. This was their vestivities. That's what he's saying. Not that you should never have, you should never spend any money on yourself, but the money you give to ministry and charity ought to be just massively more. What does that mean? So that's what he's saying. What are the implications of that? The implications are that you're giving to ministry and charity must have a priority and it must be sacrificial. Now, think about this now. By the way, I've never understood the implications of this passage until the last couple of weeks getting ready to preach it to you. First of all, he's talking about priority. When he says, "Love, hate your father and mother, and love me," he's not saying you shouldn't love your father and mother. What he's saying is, "You need to love me more. I'm the priority." If you have to choose between me and your parents, you must choose me. Isn't that what he's saying? Doesn't Jesus say that? Yes, of course he says. Now, what is he saying here? Same thing. He's actually saying you're giving needs to be a necessity. You're giving to ministry and charities to be a necessity. What's actually optional and negotiable is the money you spend on yourself. Switch it. Right now, for most of us, we have certain financial goals. We have certain things, lifestyle goals. There's certain ways in which we want to live. There's vacations we want to take. There's clothes we want to buy. There's things we want to do. And if we have enough money to do that and to give to ministry and charity, then we do. But that's the optional, whereas spending money on you, that's the priority. That's the necessity. But Jesus says, "Switch them." Some years ago, there was a British farmer who raised livestock, and he had a cow who was pregnant. He was very happy about that because he actually had enough livestock on the farm for his needs to produce the things he needed. And therefore, he was going to be able to sell that calf once the calf was born and it would grow up. He was going to sell the calf and make a tidy profit. But to his joy, the cow had two calves, twins, which meant he was going to get twice as much money from the sale when he sold them. And he was very excited. And he came into his wife and he had a sort of magnanimous moment. And he says, "Honey, we're Christians and we go to the church. And you know what? When these two calves grow up and I sell them, I'm going to give half the proceeds to the Lord. Half the proceeds are going to go to the church. If I sell the two calves, I'm going to get X amount of money, and the amount of money I get from one will go to the Lord and the rest will keep ourselves." And she says, "That's wonderful. How spiritual." Several weeks later, he walks in to the house, very, very sad in his face. She says, "What's wrong?" He says, "Oh, the Lord's calf died." You know, they got sick, but the one got better and the other one didn't get better and it died. And she says, "That's interesting." She says, "I didn't remember that we designated one of those calves to be the Lord." Oh no, he says, "Almost from the beginning." I said, "That's the Lord's calf right there and that's the one that died. What a shame." Now, the point of the story is, it's always the Lord's calf that dies. In other words, there's certain clothes we want to buy, there's certain vacations we want to have, there's certain trips we want to take, there's certain places we want to live and that's the priority. And if we have enough money to give for charity and ministry, we will. And if there's a problem and we're pinched, that's where we take it out of, we take it out of the charity and ministry. And Jesus says, "I want you to switch those. I want you to take it out of your own hide." Which means the implication of this is not just that your giving has to have a priority, but also it needs to be sacrificial. This passage goes along with all the rest of the passages in the Bible on giving. In the Old Testament, the standard forgiving of believers was very clear. Ten percent tithe. There was tithe. Ten percent of your income you give to the Levites, to the Tabernacle, to the poor, to ministry and to charity. However, when you get to the New Testament, there is one place where Jesus actually says you should tithe. It's actually in Luke 11 verses 42 and 43, where he's talking to the Pharisees about how they tithe. And he says, "You should do that." That's right. So Jesus is not against the tithe. And yet almost nowhere else in the New Testament does the tithe even get mentioned. Instead, we've got statements like this, 2 Corinthians 8, where Paul is telling, he's trying to get the Corinthian Christians to give money to the poor in Jerusalem, and he reminds them that the Macedonian Christians are already given. And he says in verse 3, "They gave as much as they were able and beyond their abilities." What does that mean? See, when we say, "Oh, I'd like to give more, but I can't afford to give," what you really mean is I can't afford to give without sacrificing. But that's the whole point. I believe in the Old Testament, you have tithe. Ten percent, that's the standard of giving. And Jesus is saying, "That's fine. That's a fine place to start." But he says basically what the New Testament is saying, "This is the real way you know you're giving enough. It's got to hurt." It means there's got to be sacrifices made. It means there are things you can't do because you're giving. There's places you can't go because you're giving. You're giving so much. There's got to be sacrifice. That's the standard. And that's what Jesus is saying. And it's amazing to go to a patron and to say, "I don't want you to throw your supper and invite your rich neighbors and your friends. I want you to invite the poor." You realize when you threw a supper for your own social class where all the patroning things were going on, when you threw that party, that was expensive, but it paid for itself. That's how deals were made. It was a way of maintaining your business relationships basically. So when you gave a meal, like the typical way, Jesus is saying, "There's a way for you to spend your money that you get your money back. They repay you." But if you were actually to throw a big feast and invite the poor and the crippled and the lame and the blind, that would just be money out the door. In other words, Jesus is saying, "One kind of use of your money is not sacrificial and one kind is, and that's what I want, sacrifice." Now, does this seem unreasonable? It's pretty shocking. As I look at it, it makes me certainly think about myself. I wrestle with it too. I'm certainly not up here saying, "Well, I've got this together, and why don't you?" But I think we all need to stand under the text and look at it. This passage is seldom looked at as a stewardship passage, but over the years I've come to see what this means. John Newton, the guy who wrote the Old Anglican minister in the 18th century, wrote Amazing Grace and all those hymns. He found this passage very troubling. He said, "All I can see is..." No matter how I slice it, I know Jesus doesn't mean it literally that you don't ever see your friends or anything like that, but no matter how I read it, it means I should be giving away a lot more money than I am. All right. Unreasonable? Not if you understand the gospel. I'd like to show you three ways in which Jesus uses the gospel to help you see that this kind of use of your money is eminently reasonable. It's a long passage, and I'd just like to show you there's three speeches. In the very beginning, he speaks to all the guests from verse 8 to 11, and then in the middle, he speaks to the hosts from verses 12 to 14, and then at the end, he actually speaks to one smug guest and tells the great story of the the parable of the great banquet. And at the end of every one of these speeches, he shows us some way in which the gospel helps us understand why it's very reasonable to give sacrificially. Today is Giving Tuesday, and we want you to know about a special opportunity we have this year. As you may know, Gospel and Life supports Redeemer City to City, a ministry dedicated to growing gospel movements in cities around the world through church planting. City to City was co-founded by Tim Keller, and he cared deeply about this mission. And this coming year at a 2026 training event in Kenya, City to City will help train, coach, and support two cohorts of 20 pastors planting churches all over Africa. This Giving Tuesday, we have a goal to raise $150,000 to help sponsor the church planters attending this training intensive in Nairobi, Kenya, so that City to City can help and support these church planters to start churches across Africa. This work is vital to the spread of the gospel in African cities from Kampala to Lagos to Johannesburg. So as you think about how you may give on Giving Tuesday, please consider making a gift to Gospel and Life. Every dollar we receive today will go directly to the work City to City is doing to help start new churches in Africa in 2026. To make a gift today, visit Gospelandlife.com/Tuesday. Again, ask Gospelandlife.com/Tuesday, and thank you for your generous and faithful support of this ministry. Now, here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's message. Here's the first one. In verses 7 through 11, 7, we already saw this. He sees how the guests are picking places of honor at the table. And then he says this, "When someone invites you to a feast, don't take the higher, the more honored seats, lest somebody there will ask you to move and then you're humiliated. Take the lower seats so somebody else can say, 'Oh, come on up here closer to me.'" Now, at one level, this is just practical. What he's really saying is, "Don't be the kind of person that toots your own horn. If you toot your own horn, people are not going to like you." And so the irony is, if you're a self-promoter, you're always pushing yourself, "Look how good I am. I know how to do this. I know how to do this." Basically, the people who most promote themselves very often don't get promoted because everybody else presents them. So what he's saying is, "Be modest, and by the quality of your life, if people will see your quality and they'll speak well of you, and that's better than if you speak well of yourself." And there's a lot of proverbs in chapters 26 and 27 that say the same thing. But Jesus is not just saying this. He's not just being pragmatic because when you get to verse 11, he is taking this principle and he's showing that this is the core of spiritual reality. He says in verse 11, "Everyone, not just sometimes it's smart to not toot your own horn." Verse 11, he's getting cosmic here. And he says, "Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." Now, I would not mind at all to preach an entire sermon just on that text because what he's trying to say is it's true in every single area of life, but ultimately at the core of spiritual reality, it's true. And here's what that means. If you go to God and say, "I deserve acceptance," you will be rejected because that shows you do not know what's in your own heart. But if you go to God and say, "I deserve rejection, please forgive me," you will get acceptance. And that's the gospel. Religion says you go to God and say, "I deserve acceptance. Look at all the good deeds." But the gospel says if you say you deserve acceptance, you will get rejection. If you say you deserve rejection, which means if with God you take the lower seat, he will accept you. He will exalt you because the gospel is, "He who humbles himself will be exalted, and he who exalts himself will be humbled." Exalt yourself, you'll be humbled because that's salvation by works. But if you humble yourself, you'll be exalted, because that's salvation by grace. But look at this term exalted. What does it mean that God will exalt you? James 4, 10, 1 Peter 5, 6 says, "If you humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, he will exalt you. He will lift you up." Jesus says to the Pharisees in John chapter 12 verse 43, he says, "You love the praise of men more than the praise of God." And there it is. If you have the praise of God in your heart, if you've repented, if you've taken the lower seat, as it were, with God, and he has exalted you, and he has received you, and he has accepted you by grace, your heart is filled with the praise of God, a sense of his delight in you, a sense of his love. You know what that means? You have a new spiritual inner wealth. You have a new wealth inside. You have real riches. You have real value. You have real security. And you no longer look at your external wealth the same, do you? Because money, if you don't have God in the center of your life, money is more than money. It's security. It's self-esteem. I've got money, so I know I'm important. I've got money, so I know I'm secure. If you don't have God in the center of your life, if you don't have the praise of God in the center of your life, you're like these people scrambling to get to the top, always trying to connect to people who are a little better off than you, trying to get more money, trying to get more security, trying to get more prosperity, trying to get more status. But Jesus says, my disciples have the praise of God in the center of their being. They've been exalted, and as a result, they're not scrambling. You know what, there's something very balanced about verses 8, 9, and 10. What He's actually saying there is, I don't want my people. I don't want my disciples to be passionate about getting up the ladder and getting admitted into those inner circles. That should not drive your life, but if somebody invites you in, fine. He says, I'm not against Christians being successful. It shouldn't be the passion of your life. If it happens, that's great. But you should have such an incredible inner spiritual wealth that it makes it easy for you to give away your external wealth, because now your external wealth, money, is just money to you. It's nothing more. So that's the first way in which the logic of the gospel makes giving away your money in radical proportions more sensible. But that's not all. Secondly, the second speech we already looked at, but we didn't look at the end of it. It's in verse 12 to 14, and He's telling the host, you know, don't invite these people, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind, and you will be blessed. And then He says, although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous. Again, I would love to spend a whole sermon on this, but I'll just tell you this. You know what He's saying? He says, here's the problem with living life the way Jesus says you ought to live. You should be pouring yourself out for people. You should be letting people into your life. You should be caring for people who are troubled. You should be going the extra mile to be friends to people who other people don't want to be friends to. You should be giving a tremendous amount of your money away. You should be very involved in ministry and charity. And you know what that's going to mean? It means you're going to feel like, sometimes you're going to feel like I'm missing out. Other people have the money to do this. They go here, they do this, and I'm missing out. I'm not going to have this experience. I'm not going to go on that trip. I'm not ever going to be able to live like that. I'm missing out. Jesus says, no, because of the resurrection. I don't think you're missing out at all. Because your future is not an ethereal future in which we're disembodied consciousnesses kind of floating around throughout eternity. You're going to get bodies. The kingdom of God is a feast. The future kingdom of God is a feast. You're going to get bodies. Jesus Christ, the risen Jesus Christ was there. They could feel Him. He ate a fish. And what that means is in the future, you're not going to miss out on anything. David Martin Lloyd-Jones, the great British preacher in the 20th century, mid-20th century, once preached a sermon on 1 Corinthians 15 about the resurrection. And it moved me very much. It's really sank deep into my heart. I have an old tape of it somewhere, and I have notes that I took on it. And here's what he says near the end. He says, and this is a paraphrase, but these are my notes of what he said. He says, this is 1 Corinthians 15 about the resurrection of the body. He says, "The kingdom of God is a feast. You are going to have new bodies." Romans 8, 11 says, "If the Spirit that raised Jesus Christ is in you, He will also give life to your mortal body through the Spirit in you." He says, this is Lloyd-Jones speaking. He says, "You know, as you begin to get older, you begin to think that your enemy is your body, but no, the enemy is in your body, and it will be driven out someday. You're going to get new bodies, resurrected bodies, healed bodies." Jonathan Edwards, the great New England minister, once said, "Right now in this body, this version of our fallen body, our body subject to sin and disease and death, you've got five senses, right five senses, but what about maybe in our new bodies we'll have a hundred, or maybe a thousand or ten thousand, which means right now you are compared to what you're going to be like in the resurrection. You're just a vegetable compared to what you will be, your future self." And then he went on and said, "Jesus Christ, the risen Christ ate a fish. Your future glory is not an ethereal esoteric form of impersonal consciousness. You will eat in the kingdom of God. You will love. You will hug. You will be hugged in the kingdom of God. You'll sing. You'll dance. Your feet will touch the ground. You'll have feet. You'll eat and you'll sing and you'll love and you'll, in realms of power and glory and satisfaction that you cannot now imagine, we will walk in the kingdom of God. We will not float over the kingdom of God. We will march in the kingdom of God. We will eat and drink with the Son of Man." Are you afraid that you're going to miss out on some aspect of life because you are giving so much away, you're giving so much of your time away, you're giving so much of your money away? You will not miss out on anything. Why? Because of the resurrection. They will not repay you in this life is what he's saying, but the resurrection, and that makes it very sensible to give away. You won't miss out on anything. Lastly, so see what he's saying? He's saying, here's why you can give away your money. First of all, you've got a new internal wealth according to the gospel. Secondly, you've got a guaranteed future wealth according to the gospel. The resurrection, but one more thing. You need to see the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that was required for you to get into the feast. Look at this great banquet story. This is the last story, and actually you could easily, again, preach a whole sermon just on the parable, and many people do. Jesus is speaking to a smug guest at the banquet who hears him talking to the host and says in verse 15, "Blessed is the man who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God." Now, this is one of those social climbing, scrambling guests, and he clearly is sure he's going to be there. And Jesus decides, okay, if you think the kingdom of God is a feast, right, let me tell you what the kingdom of God is really like, and he tells this parable to show this man how the kingdom of God's salvation really works. And the parable is, first, a great patron-type person is throwing a huge feast. The word "great" there is the Greek word "mega." It's a mega-feast. It's an incredible feast. Hundreds of guests, maybe thousands of guests, I don't know. And he sends out his first invitation, and his first invitation is, "Come, all is now ready." But the first set of invitees, and they're invitees that ordinarily come to one of these, the people of the social class of the, you know, the inviter, they're too busy. They've got good reasons. They're doing business deals. They got married. There's their good reasons. But they don't come. And that master of the feast says, "In that case, let's take the people who would never be qualified for a feast like this. Let's go to the people who actually shouldn't be here." And first he sends them out, notice to the urban poor, because first he sends his servant out to the streets and the alleys, it says. And he brings in the poor and the crippled and the blind and the lame, and they come in. But there's still seats open. So then he sends them out to, it says at the very end, verse 25, "Go out to the roads and the country lanes and make them come in so that my house will be full." Roads and country lanes. In the Old King James Bible, it says the highways and the hedges. Because at this point, he's sending the servant out to the rural poor, to the people along country lanes who lived in the hedges along the lane. And those people were very desperate. Many of them were robbers. They were dangerous. They were desperate. And they were more destitute than the urban poor. And notice for the rural poor, he actually says, "Go out to them and go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in." And the commentators are always amazed at this text. It's a Greek word that really means drive them in, argue them in, debate with them, persuade them to come in, because they're not going to be persuaded. Why not? Because the kingdom of God that Jesus Christ is depicting for us is a full finished salvation. See what the invitation is? Come, all is now ready. That's salvation. Come, all is now ready. Do you know what that means, the kingdom of God? If it's a feast, it's not a potluck dinner. Potluck means you bring something. Jesus says absolutely not. The kingdom of God is finished. There is nothing to prepare. There's nothing to purchase. There's nothing to cook. It's all finished. You just have to receive a free and full salvation. No wonder the people out on the highways and hedges can't believe it. The master says to the servants, "You're going to have to go out there and argue with them. They're never going to believe they're being invited to something like this. And I want you to see, because I think Jesus wants you to see, that that's you and me out there in the hedges. We don't really believe the gospel of grace. We have to drive it in. Frankly, many, many of us are still in the hedges. We still saying, "Oh Lord, I know that somehow if I live a good enough life, you'll bless me." That means you're still in the hedges. You haven't understood the logic of the gospel. And we can't possibly come in. We don't deserve it. That's right. We don't deserve it. Because verse 24 says, "I tell you, not one of those men who were invited and turned down the invitation will get a taste of my banquet." But verse 24 points me to Jesus, points us to Jesus. You know why? There's people on the outside. They're the proud. They're the ones who were too proud to come. And there's people on the inside. They're the humble. But why are we able to come in just with humility? Why are we able to get a full, free banquet just because we're willing to say, "Oh Lord, I'm not qualified?" It's not humility that earns that banquet. It's what Jesus Christ did on the cross. At the end of, in Matthew 25, there's two parables. And each parable talks about Judgment Day. And in one parable, the Lord on Judgment Day says to some people, "Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into my feast the joy of your master." And to another set of people in another parable, the Lord on Judgment Day says, "Depart from me," he cursed it into everlasting fire. See? "Well done, good and faithful servant, come into the feast. Depart from me," he cursed it. "You have no taste of my feast. Get out." Jesus was the one person who loved God with all his heart, soul, strength and mind, loved his neighbor as himself, lived a perfect life. And at the end of his life, he should have heard God say to him, "Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your master." But instead, we know what he heard on the cross. Why did Jesus say, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Because he was hearing in his soul, God say, "Depart from me," he cursed it into everlasting fire. He was thrown out. He was cast out, which is what we deserve so we can be brought in. He heard, "Depart from me," he cursed it into everlasting fire so that we could hear when all we have to do is repent. All we have to do is just say, "Oh, I'm not unqualified." And God will say, "Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your master." Why? Because it's not our humility that earns the banquet. It's what Jesus Christ did. He was cast out so that we could be brought in. He sacrificed everything. And that's the final logic of the gospel, piece of the gospel that helps us with our giving. When you realize that Jesus Christ sacrificed to give us life, you will start to say, "How can I sacrifice to give other people life?" I live by the sacrifice of Christ. It's because of his sacrifice that I live. Now, sacrifice your money to ministry so people spiritually live, to charity so people physically live who are hungry. By Jesus' sacrifice, you live. Now, by your sacrifice, not of your blood but of your money, other people can live. And the more you see that you live by Christ's sacrifice, the more reasonable it will be for you to give sacrificially. So it's the inner wealth that we have. It's the guarantee of future wealth that we have because of what Jesus Christ did. Though he was rich, he became poor. Though he was an insider, he became an outsider. Though he had the highest seat, he was thrown out of the feast so that you could be brought in. And therefore, sacrificial giving is just reasonable. Let's wrestle with this together as a community. I mean, some of you are guests, probably. I'm not obviously after your money because you don't even live here. Some of you, in fact, here's the other thing I want you to know. We'll talk about this next week. I'm not here to say, "You now, because of this sermon, here's your application. Give money to Redeemer." There's a lot of you don't go to Redeemer. You're not members of Redeemer. I don't want you to think about that for a second. I want you to think, "Here's another minister asking me for money." I want you to say, "What should my attitude toward my money be in light of the gospel?" And that's a frightening, frightening question to ask because, as John Newton said, "I really don't know how to quite get my hands, my head around what Jesus is saying here, but I just know this. I need to be giving a lot more than I am now." And I think that's right. Let's pray. Our Father, help us to be conformed to the image of your Son. Though He was rich, He became poor. Though He was an insider, He was cast out. And when we see that, that has got to affect the way in which we think about our funds and about our money and about our lifestyle and about how we spend it, I pray, Lord, that you would enable us to, as a community, be famous for our generosity to each other and to the city. And I pray that you would more and more conform us into the image of your Son who came not to be served but to serve and to give His life for ransom for many. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel in Life podcast. Today is Giving Tuesday. This year when you give to Gospel in Life, your gift in partnership with Redeemer City to City will help fund a training intensive in Kenya that will provide coaching and support for pastors planting churches in African cities from Kampala to Lagos to Johannesburg. To make a gift today, visit gospelinlife.com/tuesday. That's gospelinlife.com/tuesday because the Gospel changes everything. Today's sermon was recorded in 2010. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.