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All right, then. Are we broadcasting, Verla? Okay, now we are, all right. So I told Aaron, he just volunteered to be the, he has a natural talent, right, to be our backup man on the video. So anyway, we hope, was everybody hearing what we were saying? Just not the video. Okay, so we got that message through. I wanted to also, by the way, the scripture reading is Isaiah chapter 25 if you want to follow along as I read. Isaiah 25. Actually, I printed it out. for myself in bigger type. The ESV here, print, seems to be getting smaller for me these days, and part of it is for the microphone. We had to lower this thing so it's further away from my eyesight. But at any rate, it'll be Isaiah 25. shared a couple of thoughts in the Sunday school hour, the first hour, but some of you weren't there, and also those people that are online may not have heard either, and that is that I have really been appreciating going through John Calvin's sermons on Galatians, and those of you that are following in the middle of the week, have been hearing Bible studies, we're doing Bible studies through Ephesians, and I'm largely relying on John Calvin for those two. I have numbers of his books, sermons, but these two volumes, Galatians and Ephesians, are particularly powerful, in my opinion, and may well go through the book of Galatians. Again, we've gone through Galatians before, but in the near future we might start, I might start a series through there as well. But it's just a reminder to us, and I think that It's very important for us to understand some of the things that Calvin was pointing out from Galatians. And that is that we need to understand, well let me back up. I think that you all know, as well as I do, that over the years this church has suffered many, many attacks. And it's easy for us to come and think, you know, well, you know, we messed up that. And we've had our share of personal messing ups, right? But the fact of the matter is it needs to be very apparent to us that Satan does not want his word proclaimed. I mean, that's a given and that he's going to attack. One of the ways that he'll do that is to cause us to be discouraged Just because we don't have all the pews filled and scores and scores of people here and so on, we really want to thank and tell the people that are online what an encouragement they are to us. I just wanted to give us all a caution. I need that caution myself too. That we are not to judge by outward appearances. One of the things that Calvin said, he noted, is that In this present world, Christ's church is never going to be triumphant. And that kind of shocks you, you know. Jesus said that the gates of hell would never prevail against his church. But what he means is Christ's church is never going to be outwardly triumphant in this world. Christ's true church is always gonna be a remnant. It's always going to be, his people are always going to be persecuted. And we dare not allow ourselves to fall into this false thinking that because There's not huge numbers of people following us then that somehow or other we are defeated, we're not really accomplishing anything, the Lord isn't blessing us, and those kinds of things. At that moment, when those kind of thoughts come into our mind, we need to go right back to Scripture and look at, okay, well, what does the church look like in Scripture? What do God's people look like? in scripture? What is their experience in this present world? And when you do that and you begin to judge things and evaluate things, then the way, according to God's word, well, things become quite a lot Quite a lot different and that some of those thoughts were in his as I said from Galatians and He his his point was that we are of the Jerusalem which is above and not from the in we're not of the jerusalem which is here below so that the jerusalem here below the jews in jesus time what you know and they were always saying the temple of the lord temple lord look at this mighty structure and look at we are the city of god this is that and in fact they were uh... synagogue of satan and the place where christ was uh... was crucified so Christ has given us victory over every single attack that's come against this church. He's given, and we haven't had to actually do the battles that much as that he went ahead and fought for us. And it is a mistake to get into our minds that this, in fact, I had one time an enemy of this church sit in my office and tell me, this church is going to just fade away, right? And that was years ago. Well, that's from the enemy. It's wrong for us to start thinking, well, where is this church going? What's going to happen? God has a purpose, it's up to him. And so I hope that you find those things encouraging and that we have every confidence that the Lord's doing his work and he'll do it in the way that he wants then to have it done. All right then. Nobody from the church has been telling me this kind of stuff or whatever as far as negative or anything, but I just wanted to encourage you because I know when those thoughts come into my mind, I know they must come into yours sometimes too. Our scripture reading then, Isaiah 25, beginning in verse one. This will relate to our sermon text this morning from the Gospel of Luke. O Lord, you are my God. I will exalt you. I will praise your name, for you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure. For you have made the city a heap, the fortified city a ruin. The foreigner's palace is a city no more. It will never be rebuilt. Therefore, strong peoples will glorify you. Cities of ruthless nations will fear you. For you have been a stronghold to the poor, a stronghold to the needy in his distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat. For the breath of the ruthless is like a storm against a wall, like heat in a dry place. You subdue the noise of the foreigners as heat by the shade of a cloud. So the song of the ruthless is put down. On this mountain, the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine, well-refined. And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that's cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever. And the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, behold, this is our God. We have waited for him that he might save us. This is the Lord. We've waited for him. Let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation. For the hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain and Moab shall be trampled down in his place as straw is trampled down in a dunghill. He will spread out his hands in the midst of it as a swimmer spreads out his hands to swim, but the Lord will lay low his pompous pride together with the skill of his hands. The high fortifications of his walls he will bring down, lay low and cast to the ground to the dust. And there is the word of the Lord, a certain promise to his people who he invites to his feast and the marriage supper of the lamb and also his promise to his enemies that he would come, he will come and render them perfect justice. We're going to be looking at Luke chapter 14 then, verses 15 through 24. This is a parable given to us by the Lord Jesus, and it is the word of God. Let's ask the Lord's blessing then on the ministry of his word. Father, we do thank you now for your word that you've given to us, you've spoken to us. The enemy would say, indeed, hath God said, but we know that you have said, and you have spoken to us. You've given us your word. You've sent the living and eternal word, the Lord Jesus Christ, into this world. And you've inscripturated, you've recorded his words and the words of your apostles inspired by your Holy Spirit to fully communicate to us everything that is needful for our salvation and for us to be able to know you and glorify you. So now as we look into this parable spoken by the Lord Jesus Christ to a hostile and unfriendly crowd, We pray that you would take the things that he said to them, apply them to us, and that we would not be hostile or unfriendly, but we would receive his word in faith, that we would receive it in repentance where repentance is needed, and in thankfulness. And we pray this all in Christ's name, amen. Well, here then is that parable that the Lord Jesus spoke, Luke chapter 14, beginning in verse 24. He said also to the man who had invited him, When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed because they cannot repay you for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just. When one of those who reclined at table with him heard these things, he said to him, blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God. 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'd been invited, come for everything is now ready. But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, I've bought a field and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused. And another said, I've bought five yoke of oxen and I go to examine them. Please have me excused. And another said, I've married a wife and therefore I cannot come. So the servant came and reported these things to his 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 crippled and blind and lame. And the servant said, sir, what you commanded has been done and still there's room. 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 my banquet. In scripture, as you no doubt know, the grace and salvation of the Lord extended to us in Christ is very often portrayed as a feast, right? There's lots of feast imagery in the Bible. For instance, here in this 55th chapter of Isaiah, verse one, come everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. He who has no money, come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and your labor that which is not satisfied? Listen diligently to me and eat what is good and delight yourselves in rich food. So you see there the Lord's feast as an imagery of his grace in Christ and our salvation. There's all kinds of feasts in the Old Testament, right? God could have ordained several other things than a feast as part of the ceremonial law, but he chose And there again, it's an image of rejoicing in the Lord because of the grace that he has shown to us. And then you have the wedding feasts that are found so often, especially in the New Testament. Think of the parable of the 10 virgins, Matthew 25, and while they were going to buy, that is the foolish ones, The bridegroom came, and those who were ready, those believers, his people, went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. The kingdom of God, in other words, is often described in terms of a feast given by God. the king. You have the the same thing showing up of course in Revelation. Revelation 19, Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exalt and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready. It was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure, for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, write this, blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he said to me, these are the true words of God. And of course, invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb is to be one of Christ's people and one of his elect, a true Christian and a member then of the kingdom of God. So feasts are very often used in the Bible as a picture of Christ's kingdom, of a king putting on a great banquet, and he does so out of pure kindness, out of a call to people to rejoice and enter and share in the blessings then of his kingdom, and that's what you have here. in Luke 14, listen to it again, 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. Now the setting in which Jesus told this parable is, as I said earlier, a bit of a hostile setting. He has been invited to the home of one of the leading Pharisees, and he had just healed a man, it was a Sabbath, And he had healed a man and that added to the tension, you know, how dare he do this? Who does he think he is doing this on the Sabbath? And in addition to that, he had just finished admonishing many of the guests because he saw them as they came into the house and to this dinner. They were seeking the seats of honor. It was one-upmanship. I'm going to move closer to the head of the table than this guy is. And so they're showing their selfishness and their arrogance. And he admonished them for that. So that's the setting. There's some tension there. Kind of out of the blue, we're not really told what the guy's motives were, other than since Jesus' parable really rebukes him, it wasn't a good motive. This guy, all of a sudden he says, blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God. He just kind of spews that out, it doesn't really fit that much, other than the fact that maybe what this guy was doing is what is so common, we see it today, it's so common today, is that here's a guy, maybe he's like talkative in Pilgrim's Progress, right? Talk, talk, talk, talk. So, oh, blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God. That's what's important there. Maybe he's trying to reduce the tension. We just aren't told. He could well be one of these people that he just wants to show everybody, including Christ, how holy he is. Oh, how pious he is. Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God. And Jesus' parable, I think, is largely a rebuke of people like him and the others there. It's as if Jesus is saying in this parable, So, you think you know something about the kingdom of God, huh? And you know what? You think that you're a shoo-in. You're saying, oh, how we desire the kingdom of God. Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God. And I'm gonna show you that you really don't care at all about the kingdom of God. And I think you'll see that here in the parable. So here's this man. Look at verses 16 and 17 again. Jesus says, and it says, he, Jesus, said to him, to this man, that it just spouted off, right? Let me tell you about this, right? 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 don't miss this. It was a great banquet. This man is just, we're just told he was a man. A man once gave a great banquet. He was not a king, he's not called a king, but certainly, He must have been very wealthy. He had many servants. He was able to put on this banquet. It wasn't just any banquet. It was a great banquet, a great feast, and probably being held in a great house. Here's the wealthiest man, the greatest man in town, and he's putting this feast on out of sheer generosity and kindness, and he's inviting, and it's gonna be big, not only in the tables that are spread and the house that it's in, but also because of the numbers of people that are invited. They are many. Listen to good old J.C. Ryle comment on this. The verses before us contain one of our Lord's most instructive parables. It was spoken in consequence of a remark made by one who was sitting at the table with him in a Pharisee's house. Blessed, said this man, is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God. were left to conjecture, and that's what we've done here, right, as to the object, the motive of this remark, it's likely that he who made it was one of that class of people, this is great how he puts this, he was one of that class of people who wished to go to heaven and liked to hear good things talked of But they never get any further. That's as far as they go, you see. So the applications begin to get, you know, how many people today profess to be Christians? And many of them even, they talk about the Bible, they talk about the church, they talk about Christ and all of these kinds of things, but it's just talk. talk, talk. They're talkative. They never get any further. As Bunyan reminded us this morning, they think it was just wonderful that Christian the pilgrim finally got to the celestial city, and it's just wonderful that he's there, but they'll never get there because they're not willing to pay the price to follow Christ. Well, Ryle goes on here. Our Lord takes occasion to remind him, this man and all the company, everybody there, by means of the parable of the great supper that men may have the kingdom of God offered to them and yet may willingly neglect it and be lost forever. We're taught firstly in this parable that God has made a great provision for the salvation of men's souls. This is the meaning of the words a man was giving a big dinner and he invited many. This is the gospel. You see there's the point. This is God in his son Christ giving the greatest banquet ever, salvation and the kingdom of God and inviting people to come. The gospel contains a full supply, Ryle says, of everything that sinners need in order to be saved. We are all naturally starving, empty, helpless and ready to perish. Forgiveness of all sin, and peace with God, justification of the person and sanctification of the heart, grace along the way and glory in the end are the gracious provisions which God has prepared for the needs of our souls. There's nothing that sin-laden hearts can wish or weary conscience require which is not spread before men in rich abundance in Christ like a great banquet. Christ in one word is the sum and substance of the great supper. I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will not hunger and he who believes in me will never thirst. My flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me. Now, don't miss this point. Again, I'll emphasize it again. This man invited many. This is grace portrayed and illustrated, the grace of God in Christ. This was a great kindness to invite these people to put on this banquet at great cost, and this man delighted in doing so. just because, just because he wanted to be kind and generous and to do so toward many, many people. On top of that, it was obviously a great privilege to be invited to this kind of an event. This man must have been a very notable man in the town, in the area, well-known and eminent man, having this great house. Everybody go by it and they would know here a great man is there. Dinner's given, it's going to be served with many servants, lots and lots of tables there filled with the finest cuisine. It could well be that that region had never seen an event like this before. It was a great banquet indeed and this is the grace of God in Christ that Jesus is telling us about here. So to be invited to this feast was a great kindness and privilege. It was a remarkable thing, unheard of, that a man like that would, well, think of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Now there's the norm. You've got the rich man feasting abundantly every single day, day after day, partying on, right out at the entrance of his gate, his poor Lazarus being licked, his sores being licked by the dogs. And so, now that's the norm. This is a shocking contrast to that norm. This is remarkable. This is something like, only even greater than this, but it's something like us being invited. Now normally, normally I would have said at this point, it's something like us being invited to the White House. But I won't say that today because that would not be an honor, right? Not today, not when we have evil, when you have an evil leader, it's not an honor to be invited to an evil leader's home. home. So let's switch over to Buckingham Palace, for example. And now, I don't know, maybe things probably aren't real good at Buckingham Palace either these days, but I think you get the imagery. The king or the queen invites you to come to Buckingham Palace for a huge royal feast. They invite you by name. You're going to personally meet the king. They're going to pay for all of your expenses entailed. All you have to do is come. That's all. Listen to Ryle once again, you would think that people would drop everything to go. We're taught secondly in this parable that the offers and invitations of the gospel are most, they're very broad and very liberal in a good sense, right? Generous. We read that he who made the supper sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, come, everything's ready now. There's nothing lacking on God's part for the salvation of man. If man is not saved, the fault is not on God's side. And the father is ready to receive all who come to him by Christ. And the Son is ready to cleanse all from their sins who appeal to Him by faith. The Spirit's ready to come to all who ask for Him. There's an infinite willingness in God to save a man if man is only willing to be saved. There is the fullest warrant, the fullest right for sinners to draw near to God by Christ. The word come is addressed to all without exception. Are men laboring and heavy laden? Come to me, says Jesus, and I will give you rest. Are men thirsting? If anyone's thirsting, says Jesus, let him come to me and drink. Are men poor and hungry? Come, says Jesus, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. No man shall ever be able to say that he had no encouragement to seek salvation. That word of the Lord shall silence every objector. The one who comes to me, I will certainly not cast out. Now, of course, people will say, but, you know, you reform people, you Calvinist people, you're always harping on this doctrine of election. So how can it be that only the elect are going to be saved? And at the same time, you're saying that whoever comes to the Lord asking for salvation will be saved. Well, the reason we can say that is because both doctrines are plainly taught in scripture. Here's the issue. Man in his sins, in Adam, every human being as we are born into this world, you, me, everybody, we are born totally depraved, we are born with minds and hearts that are hostile, absolutely hostile toward God. And if God merely were to issue an invitation, just an invite, you know? My son's died for your sins on the cross, come to him for salvation, and now the rest of it is up to us to decide how many people would come. Zero. And do you know why? The reason none would come is because they don't want to come. That's the problem. Well, what about free will? Well, everybody has a free will. Free will is the freedom to do whatever you want. The problem is that the sinner's desires are not for Christ. He or she will only choose that which he or she loves. And that object of their love is not Christ. No one will ever come to the feast. No one will ever come unless, and we're about to see this key word here, unless God compels them to come. Unless the Lord by his spirit and by his word comes to us and works a mighty work of regeneration in our hearts and makes us, as our confession says, willing to believe we would never come. This then also magnifies the grace of God. Why are you a Christian? If you're a Christian today, why is that the case? It's not because you chose Christ. It's because he in eternity past chose you and he compelled you to come. His grace is, this is the I in tulip, right? His grace is irresistible. When he says, come to me, to his people, they're gonna come. His sheep, you see, Hear, hear his voice. But we meet people, and Jesus is exposing them here in this parable, who are people who freely, by their own choice, refuse to come and offer all kinds of excuses. Look at verses 18 to 20 again. But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, I've bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused. Tell the king, tell your master that I'm just too busy. And another said, I bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused. Another said, I've married a wife. Therefore, I cannot come. Now I think that Jesus' hearers there at that dinner that he was at in the Pharisees' house, and this is his intent, I think that his hearers would have been shocked to hear of this kind of an affront to a great man, to refuse to come for really trivial reasons. These aren't just excuses. They're not really valid reasons. They really are just excuses. This is extreme rudeness and extreme unthankfulness. What most of them all didn't see is that in pronouncing these guests who refused to come, in pronouncing them as rude and ungracious themselves, they're pronouncing judgment on themselves. Because Jesus is telling this parable against these people. These people at that dinner were the guests. who refused to come to the invitation of the king. They were Jews. They were the supposed, right, covenant people of God. They had been invited to come into the kingdom of God to obey him, to be thankful to him, and to experience and receive tremendous blessings. But what? What is the history of Israel? They would not. You know, I think this is important for us, and it's not to exalt ourselves. Paul warns us, don't you Gentiles become haughty, or the Lord can cut you out of the tree then as well. But I think it is important for us to understand The Jews, the Israelites, though God showed them, ever since he chose Abraham, right? Great, great special kindness. Paul recounts this. He's grieved for Israel because they'd received the covenants and the promises and all of these things, and yet they wouldn't obey the Lord, you see. It is a mistake for us to wrongly exalt the nation Israel, because historically, and think about this carefully, historically from the very beginning, virtually from day one, from the time that God told them he was going to deliver them from Egypt, And he brought them, and he did so, and he brought them across the Red Sea and so forth. In the middle of it all, even then, they were idolaters. The Israelites, the Old Testament's filled with this record of them, they were idolaters. Through and through, they never were then the true Israel of God, except for God's remnant then within them. So that's what Jesus is doing here. He's showing these people, you people say that you are the covenant people of God. And what I'm telling you is you have never received and accepted my father's invitation to truly come into his kingdom. You actually, you have no interest in my father's kingdom. You talk about his kingdom all the time. Oh, blessed is he who eats bread in the kingdom of God. But it's all talk. You have really no interest in my father's kingdom. You don't have time for my father's kingdom. You're all wrapped up in the things of this world, the pearl of great price. It's nothing. It's nothing to you. Now, how much of his parable did they understand was actually being spoken against them? We don't know, but that's what he's doing. He's speaking it against them. Well, to move though from the nation Israel, from the Jews to ourselves, And we think about people today. Excuses, excuses, excuses. We've all been guilty at one time or another of making an excuse instead of serving and obeying the Lord. But many people that claim to be Christians today Their whole life is one continual excuse. They have no time for Christ. They have no time for God's word. They have no time for obeying the Lord in any sense. How many people who profess to be Christians are like that? Well, the answer is most. Do you realize, and you will if you think about it, do you realize that most people in the world today, the large majority of people in the world today who claim to be Christians aren't? They're not. I was reading, you'll be able to tell I read a lot of John Calvin lately, but one of the points that he made is, you know, we need to be pretty careful about how we use the word church. I've noticed this, some of our friends back east, in fact, pointed this out to me, is that sometimes in Robert Godfrey's church history series, he will use the word church. He'll just talk, well, The church launched this crusade centuries ago, and the church did that. And one time our friends wrote to me and asked me, we're kind of confused. What church is he talking about here? So the point is, and I think Godfrey would agree, that we need to be specific. What is the church? Is the church Rome? Because the enemies of Christ will banty the word church around all the time. They call themselves the church. Well, we Protestants, we can fall into the same trap. And we'll start talking about, well, you know, back in the 800s, the church did, well, wait a minute. What church are you talking about here? Because there's the true church, Christ's true people, and then there's this visible, earthly, outward manifestation that claims that it's the church, you see. And so we need to keep those things sorted out. And if you do sort it out, what you will find, you'll necessarily conclude that most people today who claim to be Christians aren't. Most people today who claim that they are part of the Christian church are not part of the Christian church because they're not born again, they don't know Christ. This is from J.C. Ryle again. We have in this part of the parable a vivid picture of the reception which the gospel is continually meeting with wherever it's proclaimed. Thousands are continually doing what the parable describes. They're invited to come to Christ and they will not come. It's not ignorance of the gospel which ruins most men's souls. It is lack of will to use their knowledge of the gospel or love of this present world. It's not open debauchery and which fills hell. It's not open outward immorality and those kinds of sins that really fills hell. No, it is excessive attention to things which in themselves are lawful. It's not an avowed, spoken dislike of the gospel, which is so much to be feared. It's that procrastinating, excuse-making spirit, which is always ready with a reason why Christ cannot be served today. You know, let me, I'll follow you wherever you go, but I gotta go take care of things. I'm gonna deal with my father first, right? That kind of a thing. Let the words of our Lord on this subject sink down into our hearts. Infidelity and immorality, he means adultery and immorality, no doubt, slay their thousands. But decent, plausible, smooth-spoken excuses slay their tens of thousands. No excuse can justify a man in refusing God's invitation and not coming then to Christ. So you see the point, and here's the point of the parable, these wicked excuses, you see. What was the response here? Look at verse 21. So the servant came and reported these things to his master, the excuses he reported. The master of the house became angry. He became angry. You know, if you invite people over to your house and, you know, several of them, they say, well, I can't come, you know, I've got this going and I've got that going. We usually excuse that and sometimes rightly so. But we can get into this mode of making excuses for people when in fact, what they're doing is they're refusing to come to God. You know, we see people that just habitually, month after month, year after year, decade after decade, they keep talking about, you know, well, yeah, I need to do that, but you know, this is going on over here, you know, and we contend, if we're not careful, to enable them in that excuse making. None of us like to have to pay the price of of admonishing someone, you know, how many friends have you lost because you pointed out something to them and they took offense. No one really, no one likes that, but we have to be careful. When people are making excuses for not serving Christ, we don't want to be enabling them. in those kinds of excuses. Nothing incites the wrath of God more than the chief of sins. You know what the chief of sins is? It's in Romans chapter one. It's refusing to acknowledge God or give him thanks. It is living my life as if God is irrelevant, as if he is secondary. Everything else, I'm busy over here. God is good. Oh, I believe in God. Yes, I'm a Christian. But if we were a fly on the wall and we observe life, then what are the real priorities, then, you see, that are going on here? Well, living my life as if God was irrelevant. is the chiefest, then, of sins. And even if you're a Christian, we need to be wary of that. We need to look at that. What areas of my life might I be doing that in, you see? How many of us have gotten into trouble because we didn't bother to consult the Lord before we did something, right? It's like, well, why didn't I consult him? Why didn't I pray about this? Why didn't I look into his word and consider these things carefully? Well, I didn't think he was that important. There and there and there you go. And then the master tells his servant, go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame. And this kind of relates to what Jesus had done earlier when he rebuked the arrogant people. for seeking honor for themselves, you see. So he tells them what he's doing here in this parable. He's saying, you know, I'm looking around at this crowd here at this banquet. You guys are all notables. You've been invited by this ruler of the Pharisees into his house, privileged by it. You're all seeking honor then for yourselves. And what I'm telling you is God rejects, my father rejects you. And he's taking his salvation to the people that you detest, the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame. People who knew full well in themselves they had nothing to offer to God, nothing at all. You guys think that God saved you and looks upon you with favor because you're, You're somebody, you're big wheels here in Jerusalem. He rejects you. He's gonna give his salvation to people that know full well they have nothing then at all to offer. we must never, ever, ever fall into the trap of starting to think that there was any merit in us whatsoever that obligated God then to save us. Verse 22, the servant said, sir, what you've commanded has been done. We've invited all of these people and still there's room. So 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 my banquet." Now, of course, the punchline there. And if anyone, any present there at that dinner got what Jesus was saying, their teeth would have been gnashing, ready to murderous rage. Because what he's really saying is, none of you here will taste of my banquet. Because you're arrogant and really, you have no room in your life for my father's kingdom. But notice also here, go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in that my house may be filled. There's still room, we're not gonna stop calling people through my gospel until my house is filled. And he uses this powerful word here, compel. Probably who he's speaking of here is the Gentiles. That now you know how the Apostle Paul tried and tried to present the gospel to the Jews until finally they opposed and reviled him. He shakes out his garments. This is in Acts 18. He shakes out his garments and he said to them, your blood be on your own heads. I'm innocent. From now on, I will go to the Gentiles. And I think that's what we have here in the parable. And Christ's word here, compel, is that I will so extend my spirit to them that they will come. They will be my sheep and they will hear my voice. We saw in the barren fig tree this same principle. that when the Lord finally says there's finally been enough excuses, he finally says, chop it down. And that's how this ends. None of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet. One excuse then too many. Now, we also don't want to miss in this parable, however, the graciousness of the Lord. Jesus shows us in this parable How great and intense is the intensity of God by which he seeks out his people. He's going to fill his kingdom. Every seat at the banqueting hall is going to be fulfilled. He sends out his spirit along with the gospel to his elect and his spirit irresistibly compels them to come. That's why the gates of hell never prevail against his church. And that's why any of us here today who are Christians, who have been born again, that's the only reason that you are a Christian or that I'm a Christian. Because we had plenty of excuses. You can remember. Maybe, you can remember before you were a Christian, I can when I was a kid, I had all kinds of excuses. For example, for not going to church on Sunday, and really what it was is I had all kinds of excuses for doing other things than having a focused interest In Christ, I had lots of, I mean, Communion Sunday came, we always had the Lord's Supper at the end of the service, and it's like, oh, bummer. It's Communion Sunday, and this thing's gonna run another 15 or 20 minutes than normal. I mean, I can remember thinking that. and just being so glad when church was over and I could go off and do my thing. It didn't take much of an excuse, right, for me to not come. Well, that is detesting the Lord. So why did I change? It's because God sent his spirit and he changed my heart and he compelled me then to come. And if you're a Christian, that's exactly what happened to you. If you're not a Christian, That's what needs to happen to you. Or get left free according to your own will. You will always make excuses and never come to the banquet. And we pray that that not be true of anyone listening today. Father, we thank you for Christ. Thank you for your word. Thank you for your gracious invitation, which really is a command that we come into your kingdom by faith in Christ. Thank you that you have made a way for us to come. And we pray, Father, for everyone that's listening today that you would cause us to grow in our faith. And if there's anybody still dead in their sins, that you would call them with your irresistible voice, change their hearts, that they might be saved. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.
No Time for the Lord Lk 14:15-24
Series Gospel of Luke
This parable of the Lord shows us the incredible grace of God in our salvation, and also the incredible wickedness of the sinner who refuses to come to Christ.
Sermon ID | 41423213931096 |
Duration | 58:50 |
Date | |
Category | Sunday Service |
Bible Text | Luke 14:15-24 |
Language | English |
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