Naturally, the host has his own views about where people should sit, and he can place them where he likes, because they are there by his invitation. The best man, or whoever is managing the proceedings, will come and tap you on the shoulder, and he will say, ‘This man is more honourable than you’, and every head will turn and all the people around will hear. ‘You go down to that lowly seat over there.’ You have overestimated your own value in the eyes of your host, and there is now much shame in being corrected and told you need to take a lower place at the table. Mistakes of this sort which we make about ourselves are felt very deeply by us.
What a picture this is of us and our pride! Here we are in life. Our judgement of ourselves is that we deserve to be treated well. We have nothing to fear from God. We assume that we are going to be accepted by God when we don't serve him, we don't seek him, we are not forgiven by him, we don't love him. But we think so well of ourselves that we just casually say, ‘Oh, if there is a God, it will be all right for me.’ In that formal dinner to which Jesus was invited, those proud people clamoured for the places of honour, and they counted on the fact that their host would not interfere. He would allow them to exalt themselves and do nothing to stop it. It would cause too much offence to try. ‘Ah,’ says the Lord, ‘you won't be able to do that at a wedding feast. The master of ceremonies is absolutely bound to come to you and move you to a lower place.’ And Almighty God is bound to do the same also. Don't go through life counting on the fact that God will not interfere with you; he will. If you have never humbled yourself before him, if you never sought his pardoning love, if you have never been converted to him, he will put you down. His assessment of you will be quite different from your own.
Pride makes us blind to our own shortcomings. We don’t say to ourselves, ‘I am not worthy to be at God’s table at all; I am not worthy to be invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb of God.’ Pride is too busy boosting itself up. What this parable is telling us is that countless people will be shut out of the kingdom of heaven on the last day, because of their pride, because they went through life thinking they were so important. They really believed in themselves. They didn't want anything like forgiveness from God. ‘This gospel says I must come, and humble myself and repent of my sins, and ask for the mercy of God?’ They are too big and too special to need anything like that. Countless people will be shut out eternally because they were forever putting themselves in the highest seats, in the special places, when the reality was they deserved nothing from God. Pride hates to comply. Pride never thinks for a moment, ‘How do I come to be here? Should I not be grateful to God for making me, for giving me breath?’ The youngster who is very proud doesn't think of what he or she owes to anybody else, what other people have done for him or for her. A proud person thinks everything is owed to them. They deserve it. It is pride in people that always wants to be different. Pride shuts us out of heaven.
So the parable is not just about a re-ordering of our relative placement alongside other people. It is about whether we have a place in heaven at all, or whether we are rejected by God altogether, because we have approached him on entirely the wrong basis. All of those Jewish clergy who competed with each other for the highest place would have been rejected outright from God’s table, from the marriage supper of the Lamb. Only those who have been humbled by God
It is a long journey, the journey of shame to take the lowest place. At the moment of death, there will be the dawning of terror, the moment of shame, as the soul takes flight into eternity. Every sin will be out in the open, everything exposed before the view of God, and you will go with shame into eternity to be rejected by him, facing the lowest experience of humiliation imaginable. The preacher has to warn you, and say terrible things to you, to help you discover you have got a filthy heart, a deceitful heart, a proud heart. Horror and dismay will grip you, and the record of your entire sinfulness almost crushes you. You have rejected light; spiritually you are cut off from God, unfit for glory, unfit for heaven. There is mercy, there is a Saviour, if you only humble yourself you may be forgiven; you may be changed; you may become a child of God. While you are here on earth he is willing to show you mercy and forgiveness and great kindness and love. Consider these things before it is too late.
The Son of God speaks to us as no one else speaks. He doesn’t hesitate to put his finger on our most cherished sins, and to confront us about that which we would most like to keep out of sight. But on this occasion he does it publicly, before all. Though these men would never have admitted it, they knew what they were. The Lord Jesus Christ marks the stinking pride of these men, and he turns it into a spiritual lesson.