1 Once Jesus went to the house of a man who was a leader of the Pharisees, to eat with him on the Sabbath day. But the Pharisee and other people were all watching Jesus carefully.

2 While they were watching Jesus a man came up to him. His arms and legs were swollen. 3 Jesus spoke to some teachers of Moses' law and some Pharisees and said, “You know God's commandments. What do they tell us? If we heal sick people on the Sabbath, is that good or bad?”

4 But they wouldn't say anything. Jesus touched the man and healed him and sent him home.

5 Then Jesus said to the people, “If your son falls down a hole on the Sabbath, what do you do? And if your bullock falls down a hole on the Sabbath, what do you do? Even if it is the Sabbath, you would quickly pull your son out of the hole and you would pull your bullock out too.”

6 And they had nothing to say, they couldn't answer a word. They just kept quiet.

7 Jesus noticed that some people had chosen the best places to sit in, because they thought they were important. So when Jesus saw them he said, 8 “If a man asks you to his house to eat with him, don't choose the best place to sit in. Maybe the owner of the house has invited an important man to eat with him, a more important man than you are. 9 Don't choose the best place, so that the owner of the house won't have to say to you, ‘Move away and let this man sit here.’ If he says that to you, then you will be ashamed and you will have to leave the place you have taken.

10 “So don't choose a good place but go and sit somewhere else, even if it isn't comfortable. Then the owner of the house will come up to you and say, ‘This place is no good for you. Go and make yourself comfortable over there.’ If he says that to you, then all the people there will think that you must be very important. 11 If you aren't proud, God will say, ‘You are very important.’ But if you are proud, then he will make you ashamed.”

12 Then Jesus spoke to the owner of the house. “When you gather people together to eat in your house, don't ask your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich people. Maybe later on they will invite you to their houses to eat with them.

13 “You should invite the poor, the crippled and the blind. 14 It doesn't matter if they can't invite you. If you invite people like that, then you will be blessed. God will bless you on the last day when good people who have died come alive again.”

15 When one of the men heard Jesus' words, he said, “Anyone who eats at the feast when God becomes ruler will be very happy.” 16 So Jesus told him this story.

There was once a man who wanted many of his friends to come to his house to eat with him. So he sent a message first to ask them to come. And his servants cooked all kinds of good food. They cooked a lot of meat and other nice things.

17 Then when the food was ready, the master sent one of his servants to his friends to get them to come to his house. So the servant went and said to all the people, “The food is cooked now, so please come!” 18 But they were all the same, they all refused.

The first man said to him, “Give your master this message. I have bought some land to grow food for myself. I want to go and look at it straight away, and so I can't come today.”

19 Then the servant went to another man and said to him, “The food is cooked now, so please come!”

But he said to him, “Give your master this message. I have bought ten bullocks to work for me. I want to go straight away and look at them to see if they are good ones. So I can't come to your master today.”

20 Then the servant went to another man and said to him, “The food is cooked now, so please come!”

But he answered, “I have just got married, so I can't come to your master today.”

The servant went around asking all the people to come and eat with his master. But they wouldn't come. 21 So he went back and told his master.

Then his master was very angry when he heard that. He said to the servant, “Go out on to the roads. Don't wait. Go quickly to other people living in this town. Go along the roads and the footpaths. Look for any people, the poor and the crippled and the blind. Bring people like that here to my house to eat this food.” 22 And the servant went off.

He looked for people like that and he found some and brought them to his master. And he said to him, “I have brought these people here, but there is still plenty of room.”

23 The master said to him, “Go out to all the roads where there aren't any houses. Look for people there. When you find them bring them here so that my house can be full of people. If they don't want to come, say to them, ‘You must come straight away, because my master has told me that any of you can come and eat.’

24 “None of those people who were supposed to come to my home will eat any of this food.”

25 Jesus and his disciples were still following the road to Jerusalem. Crowds of people were going along the road with him too.

As they went along, Jesus stopped and turned around and spoke to them all. 26 He said, “If any of you come to me, but you love your father and mother, your wife and your children, and your brothers and sisters more than you love me, then you aren't really following me. You should love me more than you love yourself. 27 And if you love yourself and you refuse to die for me, then you can't be my disciple.”

28 Then Jesus said to them, “If you want to follow me, you must really think about it carefully. Listen. Let me tell you about a building and about a fight.”

If a man wants to build a very high building, first of all before he starts work he has to think about it very carefully. He must count his money to see if he has enough to finish it. 29 If he doesn't count his money first, maybe he will only put down the cement and nothing more. Then he can't go on with the building.

Then other people will tease him. 30 “Look,” they will say, “this man began to build but he can't finish his work! It is only half done.”

31 And if one king wants to fight another king, he too must think about it carefully. He will have to count his soldiers before he goes to fight. Maybe he has 10,000 soldiers, but the other king has many more, he has 20,000. 32 He won't wait; he will quickly send some men to the other king while he is still a long way off. They will go and say to him, “What do you want? What can we do so there won't be any fighting?”

33 Then Jesus told the people, “You must be like those two men. If any of you wants to follow me, you will have to think about it very carefully. You mustn't refuse to leave behind everything that you have.”

34 Then Jesus said to the people, “You know about salt. It is really good. But when salt becomes tasteless, what can we do to make it good again? We can't do anything. We can't make it good because it is not salty. 35 We will have to throw it away. We can't put it on the ground to make the soil good. And we can't mix it with bullock's manure to make the plants grow well. We can't do anything because the salt is quite useless.

“So listen carefully to everything I have told you. Don't let it go in one ear and out the other, but keep on thinking carefully about it.”