Luke 14:12-14 Sermon Notes

This past Lord's Day, Tray Earnhart, the pastor at Kosmosdale Baptist Church, where I am a member, preached the best, most challenging sermon I've ever heard from him (or, at least since his sermon on the Great Commission back around New Year's).

The sermon was on Luke 14:12-14,

12 [Jesus] said also to the man who had invited him, When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. 13 But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just. [ESV]

Here are a few notes I took from the sermon:
Luke 14:12. Jesus reproves the motive of only giving in order to receive.
Luke 14:13-14. Those mentioned by Jesus ("the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind") were despised and kept from temple ministry under the old covenant (see Leviticus 17:17-21). Jesus commands personal involvement with those considered despised. Jesus indicates repayment from God as a motive for doing good to others.

Application:
Jesus does not mention giving money or starting a new church especially for those despised by culture, but commands personal involvement with them. (In other words, we cannot simply pay others to care for "the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind," nor can we segregate them into separate congregations.) As those radically corrupted by sin who have been born again by the preaching of the good news of reconciliation, we are not allowed any place for pride or for degrading others.