1An important Jewish law man, asked Jesus to come to his house and have dinner with him, and with some of his friends. He was one of the mob called Pharisees. It was on a Saturday, and the Jewish law says that nobody can work on a Saturday. There was a sick man there at that law man’s house. His arms and legs were swollen. Those law men watched Jesus to see if he was going to make that sick man better.
3Jesus talked to the law teachers and the Pharisees there. He asked them, “Is it all right to make people better on our rest day, or not?”
4They didn’t want to answer him, so they said nothing. Then Jesus touched the sick man, and made him better, and Jesus told him he can go away.
5Then Jesus talked to the law mob there. He said, “Sometimes you work on our rest day, don’t you? If ever you have to do something straight away, like if your little kid falls into a deep hole on a Saturday, you get up quick and pull him out. Or if your cow falls into a hole, you pull it out, even on a Saturday. You do that, don’t you? So it’s all right to do a good thing on a Saturday. Isn’t that right?”
6That mob didn’t answer Jesus. They couldn’t say that he was wrong.
7There were a lot of people at that dinner, and they all wanted to sit in the seats up near the boss. That’s where the important people sit. Jesus watched them, then he told them,
8“You are not doing it the right way. You see, if somebody asks you to come to a big dinner, don’t go quickly to the best seat and sit down there. Maybe somebody more important than you will come later,
9and the boss will tell you, ‘Get up and give this person that good seat.’ Then you will feel ashamed, and you will have to find yourself an empty seat, and it will be down at the other end of the table, at the place for people that are not important.
10Instead of that, when you come to the dinner, go and sit at the other end of the table, then later the boss will see you there, and he will say, ‘My friend, you can have a better seat than that.’ And he will take you up to a good seat, and everybody there will see him do that, and they will respect you.
11You see, if you try to make yourself important, God will make you ashamed. But if you make yourself not important, God will get people to respect you.”
12Then Jesus talked to the boss of that house. He said, “Whenever you put on a lunch or a dinner, for other people to come and eat it with you, don’t ask you family, or your friends, or the rich people that live near you, to come to that meal. If you ask those people to come, later they will ask you to come to eat a meal with them. That will be the only pay you get for feeding them.
13Instead of that, ask poor people to come and eat with you. Maybe they are crippled, or blind, or they can’t walk, so they can’t get jobs to get some pay, so they are too poor to put on a meal for you.
14There’s no way they can pay you for that feed. But God will make you real happy. On the day when God will make everyone alive again, at that time he will pay you properly for that good thing you did for those poor people.”
15One of the men sitting there heard the words that Jesus said, and that man said, “It will be real good to be at the dinner that God will put on for all his family.”
16Jesus told him this picture story. He said, “An important man put on a big dinner. He asked a lot of people to come to eat that dinner with him.
17When all the food was ready, he sent his worker out to tell them to come. He said to each one of them, ‘You can come now, the dinner is ready for you.’
18But each one told him they couldn’t come to that dinner. One of them said, ‘I have bought a garden, so I have to go and look at it. Please tell your boss I’m sorry, but I can’t come to his dinner.’
19The next man said, ‘I have bought 10 bullocks, and I have to see if they work well together. Please tell your boss I’m sorry, but I can’t come to his dinner.’
20Another man said, ‘I just got married, so I can’t come to that dinner.’
21The worker went back to his boss and told him their stories. Then his boss was very angry. He said to his worker, ‘Get up quickly now and go out to every street in this town and get the poor people, and bring them here to eat this dinner. Bring those that are crippled, and the blind ones, and those that can’t walk.’
22The worker went out and got those people. Then he told his boss, ‘Those people are here now, but there are still some empty seats at the table.’
23So the boss said, ‘Go out to the roads in the bush. Look for people that are out there. Tell them all to come here, so that my house will be full.
24And do you remember those other people that I asked before? Listen, I’m telling you this, none of them will eat any of this good food.’”
28Jesus said to the people, “If you want to follow me, first you have to think about what it will cost you. You know, it’s the same as when you want to build a big high building. You have to think first about how much it will cost, and you find out if you have enough money to do the whole job.
29If you don’t do that, you might start the job, then you might run out of money, and never finish that building. Then other people will laugh at you
30and say, ‘You stupid fool. You started to build that thing, but you couldn’t finish it. Now it is no good for anything, so you wasted your money.’”
31Then Jesus told them another picture story. He said, “If the boss of a country has to get his army to fight another army, he first thinks about it, to see if he will win. If the other army has a lot more soldiers he might say, ‘No. My army is too little. We can’t win.’
32Then he will send a message real quick to the boss of the other army. He will say to him, ‘Let’s not fight each other. Let’s talk about the problem and sort it out, without fighting.’”
33Then Jesus said, “It is the same for you. If you want to be one of my followers, you have to think about the cost. You will have to leave everything you own, and then you can follow me.”
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