1-2 One day, a man asked Jesus to come to his house to have dinner with him, and with some of his friends. He was a leader of the Pharisee mob, that were strong for the Jewish law. That day was a Saturday, and the Jewish law says that Saturday is their rest day. Nobody can work on the rest day.

There was a sick man there at that Pharisee man’s house. His arms and legs were swollen. That Pharisee mob and the Jewish law men there, they watched Jesus to see if he was going to make that sick man better.

3 Jesus asked them, “Is it all right to make people better on our rest day, or not?”

4 They didn’t want to answer him, so they said nothing. Then Jesus touched the sick man and made him better, and then Jesus said that he can go home.

5 And Jesus talked to the Pharisee mob and the law men. He said, “Sometimes you work on our rest day, right? If you ever have to do something straight away, like if your little kid falls into a deep hole on our rest day, you get up quick and pull your kid out. Or if your cow falls into a hole, you pull it out, even on our rest day. You do that, right? So it’s all right to do a good thing on our rest day. Is that right?”[a] 6 That mob didn’t answer Jesus. They couldn’t say that he was wrong.

7 There were a lot of people at that dinner, and they all wanted to sit in the seats up near the boss. That’s the place where the important people sit. Jesus watched them, and he told them, 8 “You are not doing the right thing. 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 later on, somebody more important than you will come, 9 and the boss will tell you, ‘Get up and give this person that good seat.’ Then you will feel shame, 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. 10 Instead of that, when you come to the dinner, go and sit at the place for people that are not important. 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 to a good seat, and everybody there will see him do that, and they will respect you.[b]

11 You see, if you try to make yourself important, God will make you like nothing. But if you make yourself like nothing, God will make you important.”[c]

12 Then Jesus talked to the boss of that house. He said, “Whenever you put on a dinner for other people to come and eat with you, don’t ask your family, or your friends, or the rich people that live near you, to come and eat that food. If you ask those people to come, later they will ask you to come and eat some food with them. That will be the only pay you get for giving them food. 13 Instead 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 money, so they are too poor to put on a dinner for you. 14 There’s no way they can pay you for that food. But God will make you really happy on the day when he will make everyone alive again. At that time, he will pay you properly for that good thing you did for those poor people.”

15 One of the men sitting there heard the words that Jesus said, and that man said, “It will be really good to be at the dinner that God will put on for all his family.”

16 Jesus 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. 17 When all the food was ready, he sent his work-man out to tell them to come. That work-man told each one of them, ‘You can come now, the dinner is ready for you.’

18 But 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.’

19 The next man said, ‘I have just bought 10 cows, 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.’

20 Another man said, ‘I just got married, so I can’t come to that dinner.’

21 The work-man went back to his boss and told him their stories. Then his boss was very angry. He said to his work-man, ‘Go quickly now to every street in this town, and get the poor people, and bring them here to eat this dinner. Bring the people that are crippled, and the people that are blind, and the people that can’t walk.’

22 So the work-man 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.’

23 So 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. They can eat this good food. 24 But those other people that I asked before, and they said they couldn’t come, I’m telling you this, none of them will eat any of this good food.’ ”

28 Jesus said to the people, “If you want to follow me, first you have to think about it. Your life will be hard, so ask yourself, ‘Can I really do it?’ You know, it’s the same as when you want to build a big high building. At first you have to think about how much it will cost, and you have to find out if you have enough money to do that job, and to finish it. 29 If you don’t do that, you might start that job, then you might run out of money, and never finish that building. Then other people will laugh at you 30 and 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.’ ”

31 Then Jesus told them another picture story. He said, “If a country’s big boss has to get his army to fight the army of another country, at first he 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.’ 32 Then he will send a message real quick to that other army’s big boss. He will say to him, ‘Let’s not fight each other. Let’s talk about the problem and sort it out, without fighting.’ ” 33 Then Jesus said, “It is the same for you. If you want to be one of my followers, you have to think about it. You see, your life will be hard. You will have to leave everything you own, and then you can follow me.”