Daily Bible Reading 20th October 2026 // Luke 14:12-14
12 He 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 neighbours, 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.”
Jesus now turns to the host of the dinner party, and His word to him is equally penetrating and devastating. We need to be clear, however, as to what He is saying. He is not condemning social fellowship with friends, as such - that would be to misunderstand Him, but rather that kind of entertaining that is done with an ulterior motive is a species of dishonesty; it is acting a lie; it is a form of hypocrisy, for at heart it is saying something different from what is being said on the surface. It may be that all or most of the guests that day were wealthy, well-to-do people, and that this is what prompted Jesus to utter this warning. Be that as it may, Jesus points out that extending hospitality to the poor creates a situation in which a selfish and self-regarding motive is necessarily excluded, whereas hospitality to the rich can have very real ulterior motives involved. For example, to ask someone for dinner only in order to be able to say to your friends, 'We had so and so for dinner last night' is a kind of one-up-man-ship that insults the person you crow over and also the guest you 'used' to feed your own selfish and snobbish 'ego'. This reveals a principle, a very disquieting principle which extends far beyond hospitality and dinner parties. It is so critical for human relationships that we must spend more time discussing it, and we shall do so in tomorrow's Note.