the book of Luke. We're going to look at Luke's gospel in chapter 14. I told you that I have a series of messages I've been preaching as I've traveled around dealing with the tale of twos. The tale of twos. This morning we talked about the tale of two sides of the ship. And then in other messages I've talked about the tale of two streets. There's a broad road that leads to destruction and a narrow road that leads to life. And I would ask you, which road are you on? And then there's another instance where there's the tale of two sufferers. One sufferer is suffering during his earthly life. You know him as the poor man Lazarus. Then there was another man who suffered in the afterlife. You know him as the wealthy man that fed Lazarus the crumbs from his table. I would ask you, where do you want to suffer at? Tonight, I want to ask you this. I want to ask you to consider which search you're engaged in, because we're going to look at the tale of two searches. The tale of two searches. You'll find my text there in Luke 14. Let's begin reading in verse 16. It says, Then said he unto him, A certain man made a great supper, and bade many, and sent his servants at suppertime to say to them that were bidden, Come, for all things are now ready. And they all, with one consent, began to make excuse. The first said unto him, I have bought a piece of ground. I must needs go and see it. I pray thee, have me excused. And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them. I pray thee, have me excused. Another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come. And that servant came, and showed his lord these things. Then the master of the home, being angry, said unto his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind. And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and there is yet room. The Lord said unto his servant, Go out into the highways and the hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. For I say unto you, that none of those men which are bidden shall taste my supper." We look at this, we see clearly two searches. The first search is for those that have been bidden to come to the feast. They've been invited. The second search is for those that are not part of the feast, that didn't have an invitation to start with. And so, the context here and what Jesus is driving at is very clear. The ones that are bidden are the Jews. The ones that are bidden, they know that a feast has been prepared. The ones that are bidden are those that are serving in the temple. We could say the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the teachers of the law, they know what God has prepared. the ones that live out in the highways in the hedges the streets the insignificant that's the that's the tax collectors that's the centers that's the people that nobody wants to uh... consider inviting bringing in and so what jesus is saying in the context of the parable is this he's saying i i've invited all of the rulers and all of the smart people in the seminarians to come and they don't like me So let's go out and get the lepers. Let's go out and get the cripples. Let's go out and get the beggars. Let's go out and get the poor and the lame, and let's bring them in, the overlooked, the insignificant. So if we take the text and we apply it in today's setting, I think what we can learn from it is that we, too, kind of fall victim to the same type of searches. Let's first of all look at verses 16 through 20 and let's look at the respectable, the search for the respectable and the influential. The respectable and the influential. If we go back and look at verse 16, it says, then he said unto a certain man made a great supper. This is probably a festival. He's probably inherited money, he's sold a big piece of property, he's harvested maybe all of his wheat, and he wants to have all of these other people around him come and celebrate with him. Maybe he's got a son that came home from a war. Maybe he's celebrating an anniversary. We do not know. The context is not there. But he tells his servant to say unto them that are bidden, Come, the festival is ready. They were bidden. You know what this means? Everybody in this first search has heard the invitation. Nobody said, What? Are you having supper tonight? Nobody said, honey, you didn't tell me that they were cooking down there tonight. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. No, everybody knew that there was a festival going on. Everybody knew this was on the calendar. All right? This Saturday in Van Buren in downtown Main Street's the Old Timers Day Steampunk Festival. I don't say that so that you go and join it. I say that because I have a bookstore on Main Street where I give books to people for free, and they're all Christian books. i know this saturday and sunday's the the festival i know there'll be thousands of people on main street guess what i did a month ago i ordered five hundred more books all different kinds cuz i know i'm probably gonna give away a couple hundred on saturday I'm planning for it. Everybody here in this first group was bidding in advance. Everybody in this group knew where the festival was, knew who was putting it on, and probably knew they were barbecuing a whole hog. No, they were Jews. They wasn't doing that. They was cooking a beef brisket. Got to make it kosher and put it in context. Well, they should have had this on their calendar. They should have known about it. This is evidently a pretty wealthy man himself. He's putting on a feed and inviting all the important people in town. Now let's go and look at their excuses in verse 18. And they all with one consent began to make excuses. Everybody had a reason they couldn't go. This is interesting to me. The first one said, I've bought a piece of ground and I must needs go and see it. ask you a question don't raise your hand just think in your mind have you ever bought a piece of property without looking at it? I mean we've heard of people buying something sight unseen but who buys tracks of land without so much as looking at a picture or a land description or knowing what they're getting? How wealthy do you have to be to buy a piece of ground you've never laid eyes on? how respectable and influential do you think this person here is i know a guy that buys land he never looks at he's got a business of buying land all across the country in one one property sales within a certain tax frame time he has to buy another piece of property and he just this is what he does he just buys and sells land this guy's got thousands of acres that he owns uber rich The first person here that says I can't come to the banquet is pretty well off. Now let's look at the second. Verse 19, and another said, I have bought, count it, five yoke of oxen. And I go to prove them. I pray they have me excused. A yoke of oxen is the equivalent of a modern-day tractor. My father-in-law was a farmer. He had probably more tractors than anybody I know. He typically bought one at the end of the year if he needed a tax break. I don't ever recall him going over to John Deere and saying, I'll take five, don't care which ones, don't care how they pull, don't care what they do, just deliver me five new tractors. Never happened on our farm. who do you know that buys five new tractors that hasn't first drove them and know that they'll do what they've and what they're intended to be used for who has that kind of money who operates that kind of farm friend i'm telling you the people that are invited to this party this is the rothschilds this is the vanderbilt's this is the rockefellers This is the most important influential people that this guy with the feast could possibly invite. Because the excuses that Christ gives for them are excuses like you would not believe. The last guy says, hey, I've taken a wife. uh... okay are you get married on that day no the implication here is we're going to be on an extended honeymoon will will be good will be out of the country well dinner's ready right now now we're gonna we're going to be out of the country bullets it's ready you can come eat and leave not know where we're going on our friend the point i'm trying to make to you is that these excuses are the excuses of people who are very very well off Matter of fact, I'm just going to go ahead and tell you, I've been on this kind of search myself. As a matter of fact, about everywhere I've pastored, I've sought these people out myself. I really think a good healthy church ought to have a medical doctor in it. A good healthy church ought to have a dentist in it. a good healthy church ought to have a lawyer because I might get sued someday I'd like to have somebody in the church I can count on you know maybe we ought to have a banker in here a good banker would be beneficial be nice to have a land developer and I'd really like to have somebody with a big deer lease and one open spot left in the church how about you is over here what you get mad i'm saying that every pastor would like to have the mayor ever pastor with i don't know how bad the mayor is in every town but we would like to have the city council members here we would like the influence of the church to be made up of influential people We would like the doctor at the clinic to be a member here. We would like to have lawyers members here. We'd like to have dentists here if we had a bad tooth. I had a pastor friend. He was preaching in Arizona. He was from Montana. He got a toothache in Arizona the night before he was supposed to preach. Of course, he's preaching on a Sunday, so it's Saturday night. You know what he did? You ain't gonna believe this. He called a doctor in Ozark, and the doctor in Ozark wired him a prescription so he could get something for his tooth so he could preach the next day. That's the benefits of having a doctor in the body of Christ, or a dentist in the body of Christ. I'd like to have that. I'd like to have a lot of influential people. I'll just go ahead and be honest. I mean, I've personally prayed that Hank Williams, Jr. would get saved. What are you chuckling about? You don't want him to get saved? Do you know who Hank Williams Jr. is? Some of you old people. Do you know Hank Williams had a son? Sometimes you have to put it that way. He's a country music singer. He's known to be an outlaw and a drunkard and a partier and a wild guy, and now he's old. He's the same age as my dad. He'll be 76 this year. He's as lost as a goose, and I'm praying he gets saved. You know what else I'm praying? I'm praying that if I ever, as I traverse this country, stop in a gas station, bump into Hank Jr., I have the opportunity to say, Hank, you're a sinner. You need Jesus Christ. You've probably heard it before. but I've been praying for an opportunity to tell you about it. Why? Because I want to see him saved. Why? Because I grew up listening to the guy. Now here's my question to you. These wealthy, ultra-rich people were invited to the banquet. It's easy to say, well, I don't rub shoulders with those kind of people. If you had the opportunity to share the gospel with them, would you? So it wasn't Hank Jr., so you don't like him. All right, who'd you like? Who is it that you're praying gets saved? What influential person do you know only through the media, only through TV, only through radio? What influential person are you praying comes to faith in Christ? I want the respectable and the influential saved, but oftentimes I want them for selfish reasons. If I had a bad tooth, they could fix it. My point being, is this man bid all these people to come. Nobody came. So he sends the servants out on another search. And the second search is not the same as the first search. The second search is for the rejected and the insignificant. This is for a group of people that weren't on the list. If these people had walked up before the second search, they wouldn't have been given the time of day. They would have been told, yep, name's not on the list, sorry. But because the first people said no, here's what happens in verse 21. And the servant came and showed his lord these things. Then the master of the house, being angry, said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and the lanes of the city, and bring hither the poor, the maimed, and the halt, and the blind. My stars! Let's look at their location. the the location of this crowd is not behind in the gated community on the spread of several thousand acres that the location of this crowd is in the lines and the streets we're in the subdivisions where the common folk live what what what the lines in the streets are where we live closer and closer together jerry watch that uh... y'all probably would admit it in church but did you ever watch dallas What was the name of that place? Where J.R. lived. What was the name of that place? South Fork? Yeah. That's not on a lane or a street. That's got its own gated driveway. But the people that the master has sent them out after now, they live kind of close up. You've seen these modern subdivisions, right? The house is two-thirds the size of the yard. You got enough backyard for your dog to go out, and you can set a charcoal grill there, and that's about it. That's where he's sending these people out to. The lanes, the little back alleys, people that are living in a mother-in-law's suite. That's who he's sending them out to. That's their location. But let's look at their limitations. Here's the interesting thing to me. He didn't say go out and get able-bodied people that are looking to climb the ladder and rub shoulders with the rich and famous. No, look at who he tells them to go get in verse 21. He said, bring me the poor. Well, Brother Harold, if we fill up West Park with poor folk, there ain't going to be many coins hitting the plate. So don't you worry about what they can put in the plate. You worry about the one that holds the keys to the bag. You worry about the one that holds the apron strings for all of it. The Lord Himself can provide what's necessary. You go out and get the poor. The poor don't put nothing back. Brother Harold, we don't want a bunch of poor folk. We want rich folk. No, no, no. We want to go get who the Master said. get the ball okay but what what what a minute he said after the poor he said bring me the mind that's people has been in an accident had their legs broken their arms broken they can't work we're talking about getting a bunch of people in here that are beggars and on a fixed income yep that's what we're talking about You mean you want a church full of just old, broke-down people that don't have any life left in them? Yep, that's what he said. Get the halt. The halt are those that were born crippled. They've never contributed to society. Then he said the blind. Well, what can the blind do on church workday? What committee can we put the blind on? We can't put them on a lawnmower. The lawn looks good. It's freshly mowed. Whoever mowed it, thank you. We couldn't put a blind man on a lawnmower, could we? No. Well, brother Harold, you're trying to build a church here. You're saying we ought to be inviting these people to church. He said invite these people to the feast. If we put that to our talk here, we're talking about bringing these kind of people into the church. Yes, that's exactly what we're talking about. Well, that just doesn't make any sense. I know it's contrary to our line of logic and thought. I remember pastoring a church one time. We were about to have vacation Bible school. I hadn't been there long. A coalition of older women came to me. I quickly figured out that they were the cleaning committee. They said, Brother Harold, you can bring all the dirty little kids you want to VBS, but you keep them in that other building. You don't let them in our sanctuary. You know what that told me right there? The poor, the maimed, the lame, the halt, they wasn't welcome here. You know what that told me? The cleaning committee in that church wanted me to bring in the respectable and the influential. They didn't want the rejected and insignificant. When we take a segment of society, whether they be dirty kids or crippled old folks, when we say that's not who we want in church, what we're saying to the Lord that sent us out to search for people is we want to decide what we want. You know what I found out about God? Lord, we sure could use a doctor and a dentist and a baker, and Lord, we sure could use a lawyer, we sure could use somebody with some influence and skill. The Bible says this, the Lord added to the church daily, such as should be saved. It's the Lord that adds to the church. Do you know what God's never done with Harold Smith? He's never stopped at my house and said, Harold, hop in the truck. I got the stock trailer hooked up. We're going to go down to the sale barn. You pick out some sheep you'd like to shepherd. He's never took me to the sale barn where sinners are on the auction block and Christ is paying their sin debt and said, Harold, you want that one? Hey, hey, hey, look at this young one running in here. Got a lot of life here. This'll make a great deacon in a few years. Harold, you want that one? No, he doesn't do that. He never calls me up and says, hey, there's a heifer sale going on. Let's get your church loaded up with good young families. He never done it. Instead, he said, go get them! Go get them! Go get them! And I said, Lord, save Hank Jr. And he said, no, go get somebody else. Didn't say he wouldn't save Hank. He just said, focus on somebody else. That's what's happening here. Let me ask you a question. Do you want a full church? Well, I should have got a hearty amen right there, but you know, if y'all don't want to talk about two searches, we can talk about your need to get involved in at least one. Would you like to have a full church? I mean, I'm looking at more pews than people tonight. Did you wish it was full? Be careful what you say now. I saw a church go from 30 to 80, and people said, we don't like it. All these new people are making it rough around here. I said, well, I like it. I thought that's what we were supposed to do. You want people to come? Yes. It's the Lord's sheep then. And if we're going to talk about the Lord going to the sale barn and he's not asking us which ones we're getting, he's not letting us pick the ones with a lot of teeth left in them sometimes. Sometimes we get them with a broken back leg. Sometimes we get them with pink-eyed, mastitis, and all kinds of other ailments when they come in the door. It happens. But here's what we know about the Lord. Paul said it in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. Let me read you verses 26 and 27. For you see your call, brethren. He's talking to the church. How that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called. Oh my stars. The first search never nets very many folks, does it? Verse 27, But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. You see what God's doing? He said, I'll fill me up a church full of crippled folk. I'll fill me up a church full of blind and poor people, and I'll shower my blessings upon them, and the world will see the glory of God in the insignificant and the rejected. And they'll experience something that the respectable and influential can never experience. I'm talking about the tale of two searches. So, the first group that's bidden, they're not interested. He said, go out in town, go down every city street and every back alley and grab those that you can there. The text doesn't end there. Look at verse 22 and 23 with me. And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there's room. This is a big old feast, ain't it? They went and got every hobo, wino, weirdo that they could find around town and drug them in, and they still ain't got room. Verse 23, and the Lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and the hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be full. We see the respectable and influential rejected it. The rejected and the insignificant came. But number three, there's still relentless invitations. We got every cripple we could find, Lord. Okay, go get more. Expand the search for the insignificant. He didn't give them a new crowd to look for. He didn't give them new limitations. He just gave them more locations. I would venture to say, as long as West Park's been here, everybody in this town over the age of 20's been invited to West Park for one reason or another. Would that be a fair assessment? come to our fall festival, come to our revival, come to our gospel singing, come to a church service, come to Sunday school, come to a prayer breakfast, come to whatever, come to this, come to that. Everybody over the age of 20 has been invited here for one reason or another. But the church ain't full. Still got room, doesn't it? Those chairs have been stacked against the back wall as long as I've been here. Still got room! The extent of the search is really going to those that have no ability to contribute anything back. If you read earlier in this chapter in Luke 14, if you just back up and read 12, 13, and 14, Jesus kind of gives us some kind of idea of what He means here. In verses 12, 13, and 14 of Luke 14, He then said, He also unto him that bade him, When thou makest a dinner or supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbors, lest they also bid thee again, and recompense be made thee." In other words, don't just invite the people that are going to invite you back. A lot of churches are just doing that. They're just swapping sheep from the church down the road, and then they'll all end up down there as soon as we change the carpet here. That's what happens. Just go back and forth. Instead, this is what Jesus said, but when thou makest a feast, when you put on a festival, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind. Holy smokes, do you see what Jesus is saying? He said when you put on a feast, you ought to be inviting these people. Brother Harold, are you absolutely nuts? No, I'm just telling you what Jesus said. Verse 13. But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and thou shalt be blessed, for they cannot recompense thee, for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just." When you invest in people that can't give it back, do you know when you get yours? Eternally. You fill a church up full of poor crippled folk, you probably won't have the nicest equipment. You probably won't have the fanciest kitchen. But you'll probably have great accommodations for the rest of eternity. What do you want? You want a nice little temple on the edge of Ozark? Or do you want a... What was it? South Fork for all of eternity? I know you think mansion on a hilltop is meant to be taken literal. What would you rather have it at? The point I'm driving at is this. We should be inviting people with no hope of return. We should encourage people to come that we may never even see again. I get tickled sometimes when people say, we can't come, we got family in from out of town. I'm like, man, family from out of town ought to come here. We ought to be exporting this. He says to go into the highways and the hedges. Now, the only illustration I can come up with a highway is the one that's straight back behind me, Interstate 40. Has anybody in here ever considered trying to reach the thousands of people that travel Interstate 40? You say, well, Brother Harold, they're just passing through. They're not going to make church members. What if they got saved? What if they made heaven members out of them while they stopped in? How about what would happen there? I don't know. This is just the Lord talking here. Go out into the highways. You know how many billboard signs are on Interstate 40? You know how many crazies put billboards up on Interstate 40? Why couldn't we put one up on Interstate 40? Oh brother, we'd get nothing back out of that. Maybe we'd get something after we died out of that. Maybe we'd shake hands with somebody in heaven and say, hey man, I was going from Tucson, Arizona. That's an Eagle song. I was going from way out here to North Carolina, and I drove by, and your sign, the Holy Ghost, took the Bible verse off that sign, converted my soul, sent me on a mission to find God, and I found Him, and I'm here because you invested in somebody that was out in the highways that couldn't give you anything back. We've got to get that mindset back, church. If we don't, He's not going to give us anybody else. The highways. Never see them again, Brother Harold. Doesn't matter. Hopefully I'll see them forever. The hedges. This is just the break in between fields. That's what the hedge is. You don't drive through the middle of a hay field. You don't drive through the middle of a wheat field. If you got to drive from one end of the field to the other, you'll get as close as you can get to the fence where you don't want to drag a cutter anyways, and you go up through there. And there's people that are living on the edge of these little fields. They're not even a road. It's a two-track. It's just a set of tire tracks going back to their house. No need to ask them to come. Oh yeah, there is. There's a biblical mandate to go get them. It's a biblical mandate to go get them. These are country folk. I like these people. You ought to see my driveway. I qualify as being out in the hedges. The Jehovah's Witness don't even come see me. They may not even know there's a house at the end of that driveway, and that's okay. Now look, don't get crazy and go invite some psycho to come in here. If you know him to be an axe murderer, let's get him converted before we put him among the brethren. But let's minister to everybody, even those that can't give anything back. The crazy thing about the fellow that had this feast, he not only invited these people in, but he set them down at his own table. And he served them the finest meal that they had ever had in their lives. And when we go get a lost sinner out of a world of sin and serve them the Lord Jesus Christ, it'll be the finest spiritual meal they've ever had. We've got to go get them. We've got to go get them. Why? Why, Brother Harold, why is it so important to you? It's so important to me because of that last phrase in verse 23, that my house may be filled. If there's a relentless invitation, we better get inviting. me give you six takeaways i know i said only had three points but that was to make up for my six closing remarks how much time we get some y'all look like you got a place to be hey i got nineteen minutes and i won't charge overtime if i go over that but i won't What do we say about this? I've said the master of the feast was inviting people to his feast. Jesus was saying he was inviting the leaders of the Jews, the most prominent, to come unto him, and they didn't. So Jesus went out to the lowest of the low and invited them. Look, we're not inviting people into Judaism today. We should be inviting them into the fellowship of a church where the Lord lays out his word for us to eat and consume on a regular basis. We should invite them to a banquet where we fellowship together. Here's the takeaways. Every one of us should invite somebody new to church. Don't invite your buddy you play golf with every weekend to church again. He's been invited. He's been bidden. He knows where we're located. How about you invite the teenage girl working behind the counter at McDonald's to church, my old brother Harold. She couldn't get through a metal detector screen with all the stuff she's got hanging out of her face. She don't look nearly as crippled as the people we've been reading about. well brother harold you just see it she's at invite the young guy down at the tire store that changed your tires well brother harold he still smell like he was drunk last night while you expect him to sober up on his own i'm talking about the tale of two searches i'm willing to bet everyone of us has already done what i've done it and sought out all this the important people in town the ones who live up on top of the hill i'm talking about going out into the lanes in the streets the highways in the edges Invite someone new. Number two, don't be a fool. Don't bring Charles Manson in here to kill us all. Don't be a fool. Be realistic, but be intentional. The word I was looking for left me. Be intentional. Invite somebody you've never invited before. I mean, if they're a witch doctor, pray for them. If they show interest, invite them. Number three, speak and spend and don't seek anything in return. Don't just help those that can help you back. Don't just try to evangelize those that might come to church here. You say, well, Brother Harold, I wish you'd put this into practice. Well, I'm glad you thought that because I'm fixing to put your mind at rest. I operate a bookstore, like I mentioned earlier. We give free books to anybody who walks in the door. Yesterday, we gave books to a couple from Colorado Springs, Colorado. I doubt I ever see them again. I hope I see them in heaven. They didn't look like they were headed there when they left with two books. I don't know what will become of that. I don't expect them to donate to my ministry. But I do expect to yield to the call of God to invest in those that can't give anything back. And I wouldn't ask you to do it if I wasn't personally doing it myself. And I don't say that to brag. I say it because we're all in this together. I would invest in the highway. is a brother how do you want to put in a billboard now i'm not on any committee here i don't make decisions here but there's a truck stop down there is a truck stop on both ends there anything in there that tells a trucker where to go to church is there well if there was why wouldn't say west park baptist church five hundred north twenty ninth street why wouldn't we put something like that in there Well, Brother Harold, they'll never join here. Maybe they're independently wealthy and they drop a couple grand in the offering plate and get back on the road. You don't know. Sam Walton fooled a lot of people with his old pickup and Walmart suit. Number five, seek out even the lowest. I'll bet every one of you know somebody that lives on a hedge. Some little run-down pothole driveway going back up on the hillside. You probably don't see them regularly. You might bump into them every once in a while. They hadn't darkened the door of a church since they got out of their mom and dad's house 40 years ago. I wonder when the last time somebody shook their hand and said, Bill, we'd love to have you come to church with us at West Park. It might just scare them slap to death and they may come. They may get under conviction and show up. But be intentional. Seek even the lowest, the insignificant, the rejected. Number six, the last thing I'll say before I close this on a word of prayer. No one, no one is too far gone. to find fellowship in Christ and forgiveness of sin. Not one person. But they're not ever gonna find it if we don't go tell them about it. They're never gonna experience it if a Christian doesn't go and say, we'd love for you to come here. There's been a feast provided. Look, I don't know that everybody that came to this feast became friends with the Lord of the feast. I don't know that everybody we invite to come and enjoy what we're enjoying is going to like our food. But I know it's our job to invite them. And there ain't nobody out there that's not worthy to come sit at the table. If the Lord saved a sinner like me, He can save a sinner like you, He can save a sinner like them. Two searches. I bet you've exhausted the respectable and influential. How about we get after the rejected and insignificant? How about we throw stuff out there and hope maybe it never comes back? Maybe we never see it till we get there. Let me pray and we'll dismiss. Father, thank you for giving me the opportunity to preach here today. Lord, I pray that you would take this message and stir our hearts. I pray, Lord, that we would take serious the search for lost sinners. Lord, I don't want anybody here to think that inviting someone to church is a substitute for sharing the gospel. But in the context of this message, it is inviting them to a spiritual feast that we all have the rights to. And Lord, we'd love to see them repent of their sins and believe the gospel and join with us week after week after week. Lord, even if they join in another state, in another country, we don't care. We want you to be glorified. We want your house to be filled. Use us to accomplish that purpose in Jesus' name. Amen.