And please turn in your copies of God's Word to the Gospel of Luke, the Gospel of Luke chapter 14. And we will read together verses 15 to 24. And as you're turning there, just to give a little bit of the context, here Jesus is feasting at a banquet with some Pharisees. The feast began with the Pharisees trying to trip him and trap him, hoping that he would break the Sabbath law. He has responded to this, seeing their trap, and responding to their self-righteousness by leading them to see that one enters the kingdom not by works of the law, not by heritage or religious pedigree or birthright, but only by faith and grace. Well, this is God's Word. When one of those who reclined a table with him heard these things, he said to him, Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God. But Jesus said to him, A man once gave a great banquet and invited many. And at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, come, for everything is now ready. But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused. And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen. And I go to examine them. Please have me excused. And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come. So the servant came and reported these things to the master. Then the master of the house became angry and said to his servant, go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city and bring in the poor and the crippled and the blind and lame. And the servant said, sir, what you commanded has been done and still there is room. And the master said to the servant, go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in that my house may be filled for I tell you, None of those men who were invited shall taste of my banquet. So ends the reading of God's word. Let's pray once again together. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for your holy word, and we ask that your word would have its intended effect upon us. We ask that your spirit would work in our hearts, that we would not be deaf to your word, as so many of the Pharisees were, but we might be those who receive your word and store it up in our hearts with faith and love. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. Well, imagine you are preparing a big meal. Maybe it's for a birthday or it's for Thanksgiving dinner coming up or maybe Christmas dinner. And you've put a lot of time and money and effort into preparing this amazing feast. you want it to be special. You've even created custom invitations and you've sent out all of these invitations and all of your guests have RSVP'd saying, yes, we'll come to your feast. And so when the day finally arrives, you get up early and you put the roast in the oven, you begin smoking the prime rib and once that's done, you set about to bake the cakes and prepare the pastries and the cream puffs and all the delicacies of dessert. You even employ other family members to come and help by setting the table and preparing the napkins and running through the house with a vacuum a couple of times. Well, the day finally arrives and the moment arrives for the guests to come and even though it took you all day and you never thought you'd make it in time, here it is, everything is ready. Everything is ready for your guests to arrive and you cannot wait for the party to begin. But when the time does come, Nobody shows up. Well, perhaps you expect that people will arrive fashionably late. So you wait 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes passes by. There's no car pulling into the driveway, no headlights approaching in the distance, no knock on the door or ring on the doorbell. Nobody's here. And then finally the texts start coming in. really sorry, can't make it, had some things to do, one after another, until you find that nobody has shown up to this lavish feast that you have prepared for them, even though they had all initially RSVP'd. Well, how do you feel in that moment after everyone cancels on you last minute? Well, that feeling is exactly what our Lord wants us to feel as we read this passage. Here, the Lord is revealing more to us about his generous gospel call through this parable. You see, the parables always serve to reveal to us more about the king and about his kingdom. Sadly, the parables are often treated more like Asaph's fables, as quaint stories to illustrate moral principles, showing us how to maybe be a better person or something like that. But that's not the purpose of Jesus' parables. No, Jesus' parables are designed to reveal deep meaning about the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom that Christ has come to proclaim. And the point of this parable is not to show us how we can be better hosts or perhaps better invitees. It's not either to teach us how we can show charity to the poor and downcast, but rather it reveals how God calls us, we who are poor, wretched, outcasts, and how he has invited us into his great banquet feast. You see, in Jesus' day, invitations were reciprocal. In other words, I invited you to my feast with the expectation that when you threw a feast, you would invite me to your feast and maybe give me a nice prominent seat at the table. So it was a kind of a quid pro quo, one favor for another. But here, we see that in the call of the gospel, Christ invites not those who can repay him with some greater honor. When said, he invites those to his table who can do nothing to repay him. He invites those who are the crippled, the lame, the blind, those unable to earn a seat at his table, and yet those who are graciously called to it. by the one who has prepared such a lavish feast. And here then we see the love that our father has for all of his children in Christ, impoverished by sin, broken by the fall, yet we are called to come and taste and eat and fellowship with God at the banquet feast that he has prepared for us. Let's consider the following points in the passage. We see first a gracious invitation extended, we see a gracious invitation rejected, and then third we see a gracious invitation widened. So first we see a gracious invitation extended. You see, the invitation to enter into the kingdom of God is a gracious invitation. We don't earn a place in God's kingdom. We don't enter into the kingdom on the basis of our works or even our promise of IOUs. No, if we are in the kingdom of Christ, we are there by grace alone. This isn't new to us if we're Christians, but this was different from the way the Pharisees taught about the kingdom. You see, the Pharisees assumed their place in the kingdom on the basis of their works and their religious pedigree, who their parents were. They were sons of Abraham, after all. Verse 15 reminds us that the context is that Jesus is at a feast with these very same religious leaders. The dinner began with the Pharisees trying to trap Jesus, seeing if he would break the Sabbath law. Jesus then responded with a series of parables, comparing the kingdom of heaven to a rich and lavish feast. And maybe things are getting a little bit tense, and maybe that's why then one of the religious leaders says in verse 15, well, blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God. Again, things were getting tense and perhaps this gentleman was trying to ease the tension. We've probably all been at those sorts of dinner gatherings where someone mentions something a little bit off color or maybe something a little over political that gets the voices raised and the blood pressure up perhaps. There's always someone maybe who's able to try to maybe bring down the tension a little bit. And maybe that's behind his saying, what he says here, blesses everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God. What are we to make of a statement like this? Is it true? Well, in one sense, yes. The religious leader is referring to the heavenly banquet of the life to come. Throughout the Old Testament, salvation and our communion with God is depicted as a banquet, as a feast. Think of our call to worship from Isaiah chapter 25. This is a very clear picture of God describing our communion with him and that day when death is destroyed and every tear will be wiped away. It's described in terms of God's people sitting down and eating a feast of well-aged wine and of rich marbled meat, ribeyes, I think. And this most certainly is a blessing. And those who share in this feast will be those who are blessed. And isn't this our great goal, to commune with God in a feast like this? As our brother Daniel read in Exodus chapter 24, it's only a short phrase, a short sentence, you almost read through it, but it is the crux of that chapter, that the elders ascended the mountain, they were invited to draw near to God, and then they sat down and they feasted with God, and they beheld God. And so those who will eat bread in the kingdom truly are blessed. The problem, however, is the question of how does one gain entrance to the kingdom? How does one get a seat at the table, so to speak? You see, underlying the Pharisee's statement, which is taken from the broader context, is the assumption that he deserves a seat at the table. Especially when you consider that the entire point that Jesus was making in the previous passage is that we should not approach the kingdom or the table of the Lord in that kind of way. Jesus has just taught that everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. That was what he was teaching when he, in parabolic form, spoke and said, when you come to a feast, don't take the best seat, take the worst seat. He wasn't giving us advice for how we go to each other's houses or go to parties. No, that was a veiled way of describing the kingdom. We don't approach the kingdom seeking the seat of exaltation. No, we come in the humility of faith. And then Christ lifts us up. Christ exalts us to a place of honor. And so when you think of that context and you see this man's statement, it's clear that this man is very confident that he is already in. He has received that seat of honor at the table because of his pedigree, because of his works. And Jesus, therefore, tells a parable to correct this man's notion of how one enters into the kingdom and how one attains a seat at the feast. Look at verse 16. This is Jesus speaking. But he said to him, a man once gave a great banquet and invited many. And at the time for the banquet, he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, come, for everything is now ready. So Jesus' parable begins with a man who's hosting a huge banquet. And this is a very generous man. He hasn't only invited a couple of his close friends. No, he's invited many people. This is a massive feast. He's put on a wonderful spread. He has spared no expense. And he's made the invitations. And he's even received the RSVPs. He has prepared everything for his guests. The silver is polished. The tablecloth is ironed, the napkins are set out in that fancy way. There's bowls filled with ripe fruit and there's platters of fresh vegetables. He has slow-roasted a whole cow for his guests. What is the picture here? Well, it's a picture of a very gracious invitation that has been extended by this host. And as we've considered throughout scripture, the banquet feast is this recurring picture that God uses in scripture to describe the salvation and the ensuing communion that God has with his people. The host, therefore, is the Lord, who in his kindness and in his generosity has invited many, many people to commune with him and feast with him. And that's what this feasting communicates. It communicates the fellowship that man can have with his God. Again, we think of the language of Isaiah 25, the imagery of Exodus 24, sitting down and feasting, communing with God. And this is what we were created for in the very beginning of the world. We were not created to feast and indulge on the flesh and the things of this world. No, we were created to commune with God, to have fellowship with him. You were made to fellowship with God. to commune with God, to glorify Him and to enjoy Him forever. This was the purpose for which your soul and all of its appetites were created. It's not wrong to have desires. The problem is that our desires are misshapen and they're set on wicked things. But a desire for pleasure, a desire for fellowship was made to be directed to the glory of God and the enjoyment of Him forever. And this is how things were in the beginning. Can you imagine that time, the very beginning, however long those moments or days or weeks lasted before Adam's sin, that the joy of sinless fellowship between God and man, between husband and wife. But as we know, sin ruins that relationship, just as we know from our own experiences with those around us, and how our own sin and the sins of others can damage relationships. We know that Adam's sin brought separation between God and man. And as a result, Adam was removed from the garden, separated from God's presence. But how gracious of God that he then responded to the sin of Adam and the fall of man by initiating an invitation to once again enter into fellowship with him. God first gave this free and gracious invitation to come to his banquet in the many promises of the Old Testament. Here in the context, the many whom God invited is primarily referring to the people of Israel. God redeemed Israel. He brought them out of slavery in Egypt and bondage to be his own people. He adopted Israel as his son. He fed Israel. He communed with Israel. He provided a land rich with food, flowing with milk and honey. He gave all that Israel needed, and there in the land he communed with them. And now, as Jesus is sitting at this table with these Pharisees, now is the time that God was sending his servant, Christ, to announce that the banquet feast had come. Christ himself was the servant sent by God to tell Israel that now is the time. The banquet feast is ready. And so certainly, all who receive this gracious call to sit at this feast are blessed. However, only those who receive the messenger and his gracious invitation will have a seat at this table. None will be seated at this heavenly banquet who reject the messenger and reject his message, declining his invitation. And that's what we see next. For although there is a gracious invitation that is extended, We also see how this gracious invitation is rejected. So the day of the feast has finally arrived. The servant has been sent out to welcome everyone to the feast. Now it's important that in order to understand Jesus' parable, we understand Jesus' time. In the ancient world, if you were throwing a feast, you would send out this initial invitation to everybody to come to your feast. And that was in order to get numbers, a head count, so you knew how much food to prepare for. Because boys and girls, you know, of course in the ancient world, they didn't have electricity, they didn't have freezers or fridges in order to keep food cold and fresh and preserved. And so if you were to plan something like a feast, you had to prepare a great deal of food ahead of time and there was no way to preserve it. If you wanted meat for your feast, you had to bring in animals and you had to butcher those animals. If you wanted other things, perhaps things that were more difficult to come by, delicacies for your feast, you might have to send away for them and wait weeks and weeks in order for them to arrive. So feasts took a long time to prepare for. And so this initial request for attendance would be sent out, people would RSVP, and then finally, perhaps weeks or months after the feast was, when it was finally ready, then a second round of invitations would be sent out where those who had already RSVP'd in the positive would then be told, well, come, you've been invited to this feast, you've said you would come, now come and enjoy this feast with me. And so to fail to show up at that point was the highest form of dishonor to the host. Maybe the closest comparison to today might be if you were to plan a wedding for maybe for yourself or for a son or daughter and you were to plan a wedding at a very, very, very expensive wedding venue and they needed a headcount ahead of time and you were to pay up front for that headcount. Well, if that were the case, you would be very sure to send out these invitations and saying, please RSVP by this time. And then everyone who did RSVP, you would hope that they would come unless they were not able to make it for some providential reason. You certainly wouldn't want to have to pay for all of these people who would never show up. Look at what happens here when this second call is given. Jesus says that the guests, all alike, began to make excuses. So as the servant goes out to everybody and says, well, good news, the feast is ready. The feast you've been waiting for, it's here, it's ready. One by one, each person makes excuses. Look at their excuses. The first said to him, I have bought a field and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused. And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen and I go to examine them. Please have me excused. And another said, I have married a wife and therefore I cannot come. So each one of these guests who initially had said they would come and are now no-shows, well, apparently they all have much more pressing matters to attend to. They're simply too busy to bother themselves with this master's feast, and so they refuse to come. Let's make a few observations. Well, first, notice how all of these guests who refuse to come are respectable people. These are people who can, again remember, this is the ancient world where not everybody owned property or certainly animals, but these people all can afford to buy land, they can afford to buy oxen, and apparently they can afford to go on a honeymoon. These are all the successful people of the world. These are the businessmen, these are the wise, the wealthy, the powerful of society, the social elite. Second, notice how all of their reasons are just lame excuses. Really none of these reasons are anything more than excuses. The one man can't come because he has to see the field he just bought. This doesn't make any sense, does it? Who would buy a field without having first seen the field? And even if for some reason he hadn't seen the field yet, well, the field will still be there after the feast. Surely it can wait. The same is true of the man who bought the oxen. Who buys oxen without testing them? And again, even if he hadn't tested the oxen yet, surely it can wait until after the slavish feast. And as for the newlywed, why not bring his bride along? Enjoy a night out or a week out, however long the feast lasted. What a perfect time to enjoy and get to know one another. All of these excuses reveal that these people see themselves as too important to attend this feast. And it reveals their love for money and property and pleasure more than respecting this generous host. Here, this host went to great expense to feed these people. And they said they would come, but now they won't even show up. And as I said, to do something like this in the ancient world, a world that was almost obsessed with social honor and honor and shame, this would have been a tremendous dishonor. This was not only to reject a generous invitation, it was in an even greater way to insult, to treat like dirt, and to reject a very gracious host. Jesus' point in the parable is that the guests in the parable represent the religious leaders of Israel who are even now rejecting his call to come to the feast. Throughout the Old Testament, God had announced the coming of a great feast, a banquet for the people. This first invitation had gone out through the many promises and types and shadows that pointed to the Messiah who was to come. Well, finally, the Messiah is here. He's literally sitting at your table and you are blind to him, Jesus is saying. These were the very covenant people who at Mount Sinai had said to their Lord, yes, we are your people. You are our Lord. We will obey. We will follow you. Well, now that the day of Jubilee has come, the day of rejoicing has come. And how do they respond to this gracious invitation? They reject it. And not only do they reject the invitation, they reject their gracious host. For when Christ came announcing the good news of his coming and this day of forgiveness of sins, they rejected him. Not only would these religious leaders reject his invitation, they would reject him and dishonor him and even murder him. In verse 24, Jesus declares, none of those men who were invited shall taste of my banquet. Those who reject the gracious invitation of Christ will find themselves shut out of the kingdom. And this, friends, is a sober warning to all who hear the gospel but refuse to respond. It's not just the Pharisees, is it? It's not just those of Jesus' parable who were too busy and too distracted by the stuff of this age to hear and receive the call of the gospel. No, as John Calvin notes, it is truly base and shameful that men who were created for heavenly life should be under the influence of such brutish stupidity. as to be entirely carried away after transitory things. But, Calvin says, this disease is universally present so that hardly one person in a hundred can be found who prefers the kingdom of God to the fading riches of this world. Each of the people of this parable heard the call to come to the feast, to come to Christ for salvation, but each one made excuses. And as Calvin says, it's not only those of the parable. It's not only those sitting at the table with Jesus. No, all of us are infected with this same heart condition. And so we so often make the same excuses for not coming to Christ and not seeking first his kingdom. There are many today who hear the clear call of Christ to come, but are too preoccupied with the stuff of this age, too busy with work, hobbies, or pursuing personal pleasures to respond. And in our hearts and the hearts of unbelievers, all kinds of excuses are made. Well, I'm not really the religious type. I'm not really the church type. Or maybe I'm just too busy. Or maybe I see some of what you're saying, preacher, but maybe when I'm older and I've lived a little and I've accomplished more of the things I've wanted to accomplish, well, maybe then I'll turn to God. more as a fire insurance. But these, dear friend, are just excuses. And like those in the parable, these excuses will lead to you being locked out of the kingdom, excluded from this gracious feast. And so, dear friend, if you are here today and you're not trusting in Christ, does this describe you? Are you making excuses for not responding to the gospel? Know that each of these excuses, though they may assuage your conscience for moments of the day or they might help you sleep at night, they will not stand before God on the day of judgment. Salvation is found only in receiving the gracious call of Christ to come. And he does say come. He says, come to me and be forgiven, be cleansed, be restored into right fellowship and sit at my table. Such is the mercy of God towards sinners. And we see more of that mercy, don't we? Because not only do we see this gracious invitation extended and then rejected, third, we see a gracious invitation widened. In verse 21, the servant returns to the master with some bad news, and maybe he's wondering, how will my master respond? The master responds, rightly so, with anger. He has prepared this rich feast at great expense, and yet these original guests dishonor him by not showing up. But then, look at what he does next. He doesn't cancel the feast. Instead, he draws up a whole new guest list. Look at his new guest list in verse 21. He says, go out quickly to the streets and the lanes of the city and bring in the poor and the crippled and the blind and the lame. What a contrast. The wealthy businessmen and landowners, the elite, the wise, the wealthy, the rich of society refuse to come. And so who does he invite instead? The outcasts. The master says, bring in the blind, bring in the lame and the crippled. There may even be a hint of humor here, because notice that the master doesn't say, invite them in. No, he says, bring them in. How else are the blind and the crippled and the lame to make it to the feast? They need to be carried in. And so it is almost as if he's saying, get your wheelbarrows, go to the streets, bring them in, carry them in. It's a picture of grace. Those who are helpless, who cannot come on their own, are brought in by the master's provision. The master does what is extravagant. He opens his table to those who cannot repay him. Again, our minds must return to the first century where these feasts were places of prestige. You would hope that you would get a good enough place at the table so you'd rub shoulders with the other social elite, and that would further your reputation. You would invite to your feast those who would further your reputation, but here the master brings to his table Those who cannot repay him, perhaps in this time in Israel, those who would degrade his honor in the eyes of the social elite. And yet that's who the master calls the poor, the broken, the unworthy. They are invited to a feast that they never thought they'd ever see. Well, even after bringing in these outcasts, the servant comes back and he says, there's still room at the table. There's still more spaces to be filled. And the master says, go out to the highways and the hedges and compel people to come in that my house may be filled. Well, it's clear at this point, isn't it, that Jesus is not giving us a lesson in social etiquette or how we should host a party. No, he's teaching us about his kingdom. The master is Jesus Christ and the feast and the call to the feast represents his gospel call. His kingdom feast is for those who like the poor, the blind and the lame, recognize their utter need for grace. He is showing us, in other words, who it is who is invited to the great feast of Isaiah 25 of meat and wine. And he says, essentially, it is those listed in his Isaiah 61 commission when he said in Luke chapter four, the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. Now when Jesus speaks of inviting in not the rich and the wealthy, but instead the blind and the poor, Jesus is not speaking literally in terms of trying to create some kind of class warfare. Luke and Jesus is using poor here as it has been used throughout his gospel and also how it's used in Isaiah 61. The poor are those, whether physically and financially poor or wealthy, the poor are those who recognize their spiritual poverty. They are those who know that they have no righteousness to offer. They have no birthright to fall back on or merit to plead. They understand that there is nothing that they can do to earn a seat at the table. They know they don't deserve a table seat. Know what they deserve is to be cast out. The Pharisees assumed that they were secure in the kingdom by virtue of their heritage and their adherence to the law. They thought that their seat was guaranteed because they were more righteous than others. But here, Jesus turns this assumption upside down. The ones who will be blessed at his banquet are not those who boast in their works, but those who have been brought by divine grace. Beloved, this is how we must see ourselves. If we are to enter the kingdom of God, we must see ourselves as these second round of invitees, as those who are blind and lame and poor. We must see our desperate need for God's grace, that we are spiritually bankrupt, unclean, and unfit for his presence. We are the poor. We are those who are addicted to pleasure, distracted by idols, and mired in our own sin. like the blind and the lame in this parable. What we need is Christ to come and to lift us up and to bring us to his feast and to seat us at his table. And once there, we know that we can never repay him, for our salvation is entirely by grace. And isn't this concept captured so well in the words of that hymn? Why was I made to hear thy voice and enter while there's room when thousands make a wretched choice and rather starve than come? Well, the Pharisee says it's because of my works. It's because of my religious heritage. It's because of who my parents were. No, the gospel says. It was the same love that spread the feast, that sweetly drew us in, else we had still refused to taste and perished in our sin. All glory, all glory goes to our gracious host, who not only spread the feast, but also draws us, unworthy sinners as we are, by his grace. And he makes us honored guests. If you are here today and you don't see yourself this way, if you think that you're worthy of a place in the kingdom based on your own merit, then your heart is far from the kingdom of God. But the good news of the gospel is that there is still room at this table. There is still room at this feast for you. And the gospel invitation still stands. This afternoon, Jesus himself calls you to come to him. to acknowledge your brokenness, to acknowledge your need and your inability to save yourself. God does not wait for you to turn yourself from a cripple into someone who can walk or from blind to sight. No, God simply calls you to come to him and acknowledge your need, your helplessness. And there in your helplessness, he meets you. and he brings you to himself, giving you a seat that you could never earn. The feast is still open, and the invitation still goes out today. If you hear his voice, do not harden your heart. Recognize your need, your blindness, your poverty, and come. There is still room at the table for you. And for all who come, The master of the feast, Jesus Christ welcomes you, not because of what you've done, but because of what he has done for you. For he is the gracious host who spared no expense in preparing this feast of your salvation. Just as the host in the parable suffered rejection and dishonor, and through that rejection and dishonor, was able to invite even more to his feast. So also, through the rejection and dishonor and shame of our Lord, we have come to this feast. His death on the cross has procured our dinner invitation. He became a curse for us so that we could rightly sit at his table and be called blessed. He drank the full cup of God's wrath due to sin so that we could drink of the sweet wine of the cup of the new covenant with him and the marriage supper of the lamb. And so once again, dear friends, the master calls. And he says, come, for everything is ready. Will you come? The table is set, the invitation is clear, and the grace is abundant. Come and find life at the feast of Christ. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for your rich grace to us, undeserved, through the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for that rich grace that is applied to us by your Holy Spirit. the one who makes us aware and alert of our sin and our need of Christ. And we ask that even as the word has gone out, that your spirit would continue to work through the word. Lord, help each one of us see our blindness, our lostness apart from you, that each one of us might turn to Christ and come and taste and see that the Lord is good. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.