The Life of Jesus

and he will tell you, ‘I don’t know where you’re from. Get away from me, all you workers of wickedness!’

You will cry and grind your teeth when you see Avraham, Yitz’chak, Ya‘akov and all the prophets inside the Kingdom of God, but yourselves thrown outside.

Moreover, people will come from the east, the west, the north and the south to sit at table in the Kingdom of God.

And notice that some who are last will be first, and some who are first will be last.”

Just at that moment, some P’rushim came up and said to Yeshua, “Get out and go away from here, because Herod wants to kill you!”

He said to them, “Go, tell that fox, ‘Pay attention: today and tomorrow I am driving out demons and healing people, and on the third day I reach my goal.’

Nevertheless, I must keep travelling today, tomorrow and the next day; because it is unthinkable that a prophet should die anywhere but in Yerushalayim.

“Yerushalayim! Yerushalayim! You kill the prophets! You stone those who are sent to you! How often I wanted to gather your children, just as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, but you refused!

Look! God is abandoning your house to you! I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of Adonai!’”

One Shabbat Yeshua went to eat in the home of one of the leading P’rushim, and they were watching him closely.

In front of him was a man whose body was swollen with fluid.

Yeshua spoke up and asked the Torah experts and P’rushim, “Does the Torah allow healing on Shabbat or not?”

But they said nothing. So, taking hold of him, he healed him and sent him away.

To them he said, “Which of you, if a son or an ox falls into a well, will hesitate to haul him out on Shabbat?”

And to these things they could give no answer.

When Yeshua noticed how the guests were choosing for themselves the best seats at the table, he told them this parable:

“When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, don’t sit down in the best seat; because if there is someone more important than you who has been invited,

the person who invited both of you might come and say to you, ‘Give this man your place.’ Then you will be humiliated as you go to take the least important place.

Instead, when you are invited, go and sit in the least important place; so that when the one who invited you comes, he will say to you, ‘Go on up to a better seat.’ Then you will be honored in front of everyone sitting with you.

Because everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but everyone who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Yeshua also said to the one who had invited him, “When you give a lunch or a dinner, don’t invite your friends, brothers, relatives or rich neighbors; for they may well invite you in return, and that will be your repayment.

Instead, when you have a party, invite poor people, disfigured people, the crippled, the blind!

How blessed you will be that they have nothing with which to repay you! For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

On hearing this, one of the people at the table with Yeshua said to him, “How blessed are those who eat bread in the Kingdom of God!”

But he replied, “Once a man gave a banquet and invited many people.