Well, good morning Calvary Reformed Presbyterian Church. I had the realization this morning talking to a few of you that it has been a while since I regularly went to church here. I think my family and I, my dad's last assignment at Langley, while he was still active duty, I think we got here in 2009 when I was entering my junior year of high school, and I left in 2011, and I've only been back probably a couple times a year since then. And some of you remember me and talk to me and say, hey, Stephen, some of you, hey, someone asked me, are you lost this morning? It's like, yes, but not in the way that you think, I suppose. Well, if you could turn in your copy of the Scriptures this morning to Luke 14, 12-24. Luke 14, 12-24. Jesus is at a dinner. At a dinner, and His host is a ruler of the Pharisees. And Jesus is being watched closely, but He has not cared one bit about that. He has healed a man on the Sabbath, and he has rebuked the judgment the Pharisees levied at that action, and then he reverses their pride by reversing their sense of honor, saying, You know, those who exalt himself, for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted. And in our parable, he pulls no punches as he continues. So if you could turn in your scriptures, we will begin. Hear the word of the Lord. 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, well, 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 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. And 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 have commanded has been done, and yet there is still 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 my banquet. This is the word of the Lord. Let us give thanks to him and ask for him to teach us from it. Heavenly father, you are the good shepherd. Lord, you leave the 99 and you go after the lost sheep. And Lord, you lead the whole flock into green pastures and by still waters, and you restore our souls. I pray that your people would hear your voice and they would follow you as you call them to yourself. Lord, that the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight. Oh Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Amen. Are you an insider or an outsider? this question of being inside or being on the outside drives a lot of the ire in our political discourse. But a lot of these questions of being an insider or an outsider usually boil down, how can we, if you're on the outside, as outsiders become insiders, and maybe if you're on the inside, how can we as insiders keep some of those people out? Now there are whole YouTube channels and websites dedicated to teaching people how to sneak in to a concert or to a red carpet event or to an exclusive party. But why would something like this interest us if we were not seeking access? We want access, we want to shed kind of our sad and sorrowful, maybe depressed existences and access a higher plane of joy and fulfillment. Now there are so many false philosophies and religions out there that offer us doors to access to gain these things. But every false religion and philosophy, when you walk through their door, tailor-made just for you, it just leads to more doors, or to nothing at all. And so the good news of the gospel is that we don't have to seek access, we don't have to earn it, but access in the person of Jesus Christ comes to us. Access looks like a banquet. And Jesus Christ is hosting a banquet, and he has given an open invitation for all who will enter his joy. And so, brothers and sisters, the burden of our text this morning is that you must enter into Christ's gracious banquet. Enter into Christ's gracious banquet for three reasons. Enter into the banquet because the invitation is astonishing. Enter into the banquet even if many reject the invitation. And finally, enter into the banquet because you are compelled to come in. So you must enter into Christ's gracious banquet because the invitation first is astonishing. And the invitation is astonishing, we're gonna see right off the bat, because it ignores the worldly pattern, it breaks it entirely. What does Jesus tell this ruler of the Pharisees in verse 12 about parties? You know, he said, when you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. Jesus knows how the world works. He knows that the world operates on a set pattern, whether you're an insider or an outsider of tit for tat. You scratch my back, I'll scratch your back. And if you are a powerful insider, you know you have to scratch backs for your back to be scratched. Or you might lose everything you have. Or at least, or maybe you are some, become some sort of outsider in the process. It's a dangerous game, this tit for tat. but what you have to do is you have to imbibe this kind of, I'm gonna call it a secular golden rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but only if you can get something of equal value or better in return, and at a minimum, if someone can owe you a favor, that's good too. And Jesus would not have his host operate on such premises, on this pattern. Because God's invitation to his banquet is astonishing because it reflects his very heart. And so this advice or this command you could say that he gives to this ruler, the Pharisees, is not the center of our text, but it does reveal God's compassion for sinners. Who would Jesus put on the guest list? Well, he tells us. When you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind, and you will be blessed because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just. Now, what do the poor, the crippled, lame, and blind all have in common? Well, in some way or another, they're all helpless, but in different ways. They are completely dependent upon other people to have their most basic needs met. And people like that usually don't end up on the inside of societies. They're usually outsiders. And in an agrarian society where you have most of society is day wage laborers, people like this can't fend for themselves. If no one's looking out for them, they starve. They go hungry very quickly. And so, in the pharisaical mindset, in the prevailing worldview of this day and age, if you ended up in this position of helpless weakness, somehow it was your fault. Remember the pharisees, not the pharisees, remember the disciples in John 9, they're walking by a man born blind and they say, hey Lord, whose fault is this? Was it his or his parents that he was born blind? That's how people thought about people who were weaker than them, that were on the outside. But we see that these are the very people, these dregs of society, if you will, that Jesus invites to his banquet. He's essentially telling this rule of the Pharisees, look, if you want to really do righteousness, If you really want to be a godly lord, if you will, of this banquet, if you want to be blessed, have a lasting reward, you need to be like me. Here's who I'm inviting to the banquet. Can you do likewise? And so again, that advice is not the center, but it shows us a picture of what Jesus thinks about these weak and helpless people. The people that God is bringing in are helpless to fend for themselves, both physically and most of all, spiritually. I think Jesus may have had King David in mind when He gave this advice. You don't have to go there, but in 2 Samuel 9, David has established his throne, and then he remembers his old pal Jonathan. They had a covenant of friendship, and he says, is there anyone left from Jonathan or the house of Saul to whom I can do kindness? And he finds out that there's a guy, a crippled son, named Mephibosheth, who's been living off really the charity of another man in obscurity. And so he summons Mephibosheth before him. And if you're Mephibosheth, you're probably thinking you're dead meat. Mephibosheth calls himself, in this text, a dead dog. But what does David tell him? He says, do not fear, for I will show you kindness for the sake of your father, Jonathan. and I will restore to you all the land of Saul, your father, and you shall eat at my table always. David, in his kindness and his Christ-likeness, elevates a dead dog like Mephibosheth to eat as a king's son. And Mephibosheth gives us a picture of what we're like spiritually. Whether you are physically crippled, blind, lame, or poor, or spiritually so, we are people that Christ is inviting to dine with Him. We are all spiritual Mephibosheths. We need help. We need the condescension and the grace of a loving father and a Christ who's willing to invite us and pursue us unto his table. It's all of grace. But we sometimes forget that. Even if we have believed, if we have entered into the banquet, sometimes we forgot how we got there. Sometimes we think that we've earned something in the sight of God where, you know, it started off with grace, but you know, I've started to, you know, at this point, you know, I've started to, you know, earn my own keep, if you will. Another, a whole church that forgot this, you don't have to go there again, but Revelation 3, where there was the Laodicean church. Jesus confronts them on this. He says, you have said, I am rich and I have prospered and I need nothing. But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. These people who are rich, who lacked nothing, they were insiders perhaps in their society, even as members of the church. And Jesus says, you have forgotten who you are. Pitiable, poor, blind, naked, wretched. Jesus is saying, come to me and be clothed. Buy from me without money and without price. And the same promise belongs to us. The text continues on to say that Jesus stands at the door and knocks. If we hear his voice and open to him, he will dine with us and we with him. Access to God looks like a banquet. And we should enter into that gracious banquet because the invitation is astonishing because Christ would dine with sinners who don't deserve it and have fellowship with them and make them whole. but some still besmirch God's kindness and refuse the invitation anyway. So enter into Christ's gracious banquet, because the invitation's astonishing, and enter even if many reject the invitation, our second point. Now we have to ask ourselves, what would drive somebody to reject this invitation? Can't people see God's grace? It's incredible. Well, let's say that you have two invitations to two different parties that are offered at the same time, and you're trying to decide which one to go to. What is usually the deciding factor for most people on how you decide? Is it the location? Oh, they're at the park, but this person's at so-and-so's nice house. Is it the food? This person can't cook, but this person's gonna have hors d'oeuvres catered from a special place. You know, but what I think when it really comes down to it, how most people decide to go, all things being equal, is the people. Where are your people going to be? I think we can relate with that. I have attended many a simple party with very simple pleasures and had a ton of fun because my people were there and the host was a great friend of mine. You can have a rock and rollin' time with just those things, just the people itself. On the other hand, I've left some pretty grand parties early because some of the people were hard to be around and it wasn't fun. The people make the party, both the guests and the host. So the rejections that are coming in our parable and in our text, they're telling. It tells what these people think about the host and his guest list. So many reject the invitation because it's not their kind of party. We get the first little hint of this in verse 15. So when one of those who reclined at table with him heard these things, that is about the guest list, He said to him, well, blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God. Now, at first brush, this statement doesn't look bad at all. It looks pretty good. It's a truism. Of course, if you're eating bread in the kingdom of God, you're blessed. No one's denying that. But there's a challenge behind this statement, believe it or not, whether intentional or unintentional. Blessed is a loaded term if you are a Jew. You know, a lot of Jews, if you say blessed, you know, blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the godly. If you say blessed, they instantly are going to Psalm 1. Blessed is the man who does not walk with, sit with, stand with sinners. Blessed is the man whose meditation is on the law of the Lord day and night. That is the man who is truly blessed. And so when he can say, blesses a man, or blesses everyone who eat bread in the kingdom of God, he's saying, look, we Pharisees are blessed because of our strict adherence to this code, and we're gonna eat bread in the kingdom of God. Jesus, you may be inviting these poor, you know, wretches, but obviously it's their sin who got them there. They're outsiders, we're insiders. No thanks, our party's in heaven. I don't know where you're partying, Jesus. Whether or not he meant to communicate that, and it's debatable. That is what he communicated, and that's not lost on Jesus. Jesus does not just start parables willy-nilly. He starts parables to respond to a specific issue at hand. And so Jesus begins. Says, 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. 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 ox and then I go to examine them. Please have me excused. Another said, I have married a wife and therefore I cannot come. And so, you have to understand a little bit about feasting in this society to really understand what's going on in this parable, right? If we give an invitation to a party, any one of us, we have date, time, what to wear, so on and so forth, you know, be there, be square. In their case, their invitations were given in two stages. The first stage said, hey, a party's coming up and here's why, be ready for it, no date or time, undetermined. And you were supposed to give your commitment, yes, I'm gonna be there. And that was your RSVP. Even if you didn't know the date or the time. Mind you, these people didn't have cars. They didn't really travel a whole lot. So you're expected to be around. But I'll be there. I don't know what's gonna be, but I'll be there. And then when the feast was ready, they would send the servant out saying, hey, look, those of you who said you were coming, time to party. Drop what you're doing and let's go. And so this parable is telling us that he's already invited people, and this servant is coming around saying, hey, time to party, you know, drop work, you said you were coming, let's go. And so it makes these excuses look really bad, and they are bad excuses. So we have buying fields, we have to go look at them. You know, feasting was not done, usually did not start in the morning, usually start in the evening, it's near the end of the work day. Oh, but I have, I've got to go look at a field, I'm sorry. Same thing with the oxen. And then being married. Not to be crass, but your wife's not going anywhere. Bring her with you. Bring her into the joy of the feast. These excuses end up being flimsy and insufficient to renege on the original commitment to go. It shows you what they thought of the host. It ends up being really a slap in the face to this host. This host in verse 21, he's not angry for nothing. And so likewise, these Jews, these people who had God's promises, they had the sweet and precious covenant of grace, the promises to Abraham and through Moses and through the prophets to David, they've been invited for a long time. And yet when Jesus comes in Mark 1 and declares, the kingdom of heaven is at hand, repent and believe the gospel, that was invitation number two. Come, repent, come to Christ, believe in the Messiah, believe in him. But they wouldn't come. They wouldn't come. Ultimately it's because they had contempt for the host. And really contempt for the host and his guest list as well. It's a sad thing to have such sweet and precious promises, to be committed to going into and entering into salvation and rejecting it. But the Lord, though they are rejected, rejects them in turn. Skip to verse 24. For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet. So it actually would be more helpful here if the ESV adopted the Southern y'all. We're on the border of the south, Virginia, the Yankees are coming south is what I've been told in Mississippi. And the border of where the south truly starts is moving southward. But I tell you that y'all would be a better way to put it. For I tell y'all, none of those men who are invited shall taste my banquet. What this tells us is Jesus He's broken the parable real quick and he stepped into and assumed the role of the Lord of the Feast and he's addressing the people at the party. The Lord of the Feast in the parable is addressing one single servant. If it was still in the parable strictly, he'd be saying the second person singular, just you. You, Jeff. But I know it's y'all. It's y'all. Jesus is the Lord of the Feast. And so to use another Southernism, it's like saying, ain't none of y'all gonna get a lick of that blessing if you don't come to my party. But the Lord rejects them in turn, because they've rejected him and his gracious blessing offered at his banquet. And so there are dire consequences for not entering into Christ's feast. dire, dire, dire consequences. I cannot tell you that enough, that when you die, you will go to one of two places, heaven and the presence of Christ, or outer darkness, where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth, the fires of hell. There's a reckoning coming each day for every single one of us, where God will determine and declare whether we were an insider with Christ or an outsider the entire time. And so if you've made a public profession of faith, if you've received baptism, if you've declared yourself to be one with Christ, that is just the first invitation. You've made a commitment. You must still enter into the feast if you have not already. And so how can you know? How can I know if you're unsure? How can I know whether I'm an insider or an outsider? Well, let me ask you a good deathbed question. Is Christ precious to you? Is Christ precious to you? And if He's not precious to you, if you're not sure, what is He to you? What is He to you? Those who are inclined to go into His gracious banquet, are those who love him. They love the host. We say, well, how much love is enough? How much do I have to love Christ to get in? But I tell you what the Apostle John tells us, and I think it's 1 John 4, 19, says, we love because he first loved us. If it's too hard of a question to say, is Christ precious to me, if your mind and your heart are clouded by sin, maybe you can reverse it and say, does Jesus love you? I once asked my son that very question about a year ago. I said, Matthew, do you love Jesus? He said, he looked like he was playing. He said, no. Oh, okay. Well, does Jesus love you? He flipped up his head and said, yes, a lot. I don't know what that says about him, but maybe he's just a little Calvinist. But if you are not sure, if your mind is clouded by sin, do you sense that Jesus has given himself for you? That he has died on the cross for your sins so that your sins could be forgiven? Have you been buried with him in baptism and risen to new life as Christ working through the Holy Spirit resurrection life in your heart even a little bit? Is he doing that work? And so if you sense that, yes, just a little bit, I sense a little bit of life in me, the Holy Spirit's showing you, enter into the feast. Even if people around you make it hard, they create doubt, they cause many tears, enter into Christ's joy. If you begin that journey to the banquet, God will ensure you come to him, because Paul tells us in Philippians 1.6, he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. Come to him, because if he started the work, he's gonna finish it, you better bet it. So enter into Christ's gracious banquet because the invitation itself is astonishing. Enter in even if many reject it. And finally, enter in because you are compelled to come into this feast. You're compelled to come in because God has commanded it so. Let's look at verses 21 through 23 first. So the servant came and reported these things to his master, these rejections. Then the master of the house became angry and said to his servant, go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, bring in the poor and the crippled and blind and lame. And the servant said, sir, what you have commanded has been done and still there is room. And the master said to the servant, go out to the highways and hedges, compel people to come in that my house may be filled. Taking a quick pause, I'll say if there's a great Charles Spurgeon sermon on this text, compel them to come in. I highly commend that to you. It's great to read about the free offer of the gospel. but we are compelled to come in because he's commanded it, so. And so, the master of the feast here, these rejections, this anger has driven him to action, where he gives the strongest possible force to a command, and he gives four of them. Go out, bring them in. Go out and compel them to come in, and don't stop until you're all done, until the house is full. God has commanded and determined that his house will be filled because his feast is that good and somebody has to have it in this parable, this master of the feast. But is he just filling it just to soothe the insults given and the injury? Well, no. So this word fulfilled is usually, it's a little bit different word fulfilled than what you would usually see. So this word fulfilled is like if you took, if you were filling water into a jar and you filled it all the way up to the brim. It's like filling up a, you know, when you have just that little bit of coffee left in the pot and you're like, I don't wanna have two cups and you just pour it and you pour it all the way up to the top. But if you look at it wrong or breathe on it, the water or the coffee will spill over. In other words, the master of this feast is telling his servant, we're testing the building's fire code. Let's pack him in. This place is gonna be chock full. But none of those other men will taste it. God has commanded and he's determined to fill his feast. And how is he gonna do it? Well first, he's bringing in the helpless. You know, these blind and lame, crippled, poor people. The people that Christ wouldn't have invited anyway, he's bringing them in. so that they will eat as the king's sons, as we've already discussed. But again, is this so that these poor, crippled, blind, lame people can, you know, we're gonna take care of them? This is like, it's not a welfare program where we're taking care of them and expecting them to go off on their own one day. Because people like this are never going to be able to go off on their own one day. Mephibosheth was crippled for life. These people are crippled, blind, and lame for life. They cannot have anything happen to them but be served. And Christ is determined to serve them, to love them with all of his divine heart. He's bringing them in. He goes after those lost sheep. And sheep, when they get lost, they can't find that pen. When they're all by their self, they wander all which way. But the shepherd, the good shepherd, carries the sheep in his arms all the way home. You know, the fifth verse of How Firm a Foundation talks about God's eternal love. It's referencing Isaiah 46, four, one of my favorite verses in the Old Testament. But the people of God, these lost sheep that God is bringing back in, you know, the end of that hymn says, they are like lambs that shall be in my bosom born. God is carrying them back to his fold, into his banquet. He's bringing in the helpless. He's also pressing in the stranger. And so these people that are just out in the highways and the hedges, they probably had no idea who this master was. Maybe if they had heard of him, they didn't know him, they had no connection to him. I had no connection to the President of the United States, other than when I served in the Air Force. This would be like if the King of Kings and Lord of Lords saying, hey, go find people and tell them, this would be like if President Biden said, I'm giving him a personal invitation. Go find Stephen Dahl and bring him in. Compel him to come in. You know, in mind, he probably has the Gentiles, people who had no knowledge of the covenants, of God's love for Israel. You know, they had no idea about, they had no good theology, but Christ is inviting them anyway. He's bringing those people in. Now, is he bringing the men kicking and screaming? What does Jesus mean by using the word compel? So in this particular case, this actually was a thing that happened. A master could continue to fill his feast in the ancient world by going out in the highways and the hedges. And then a stranger, if he receives such an invitation, it would have been polite and proper for him to decline, saying, no, no, no, I'm just traveling, or I don't know him, I'm not gonna go. But what the master is telling his servant is don't take no for an answer. Tell them I am extending a personal invitation for them. You must insist that they come in against all protests. And so he's pressing in the stranger. And we know strangers out there, when they get pressed in a party like that, they say, well, I'm invited. I'm not really doing anything else. I might as well just go and check it out. See what's going on. And they find out that it's not just too good to be true. When you find out what is too good to be true, ends up being true, it's too good not to share. We have a great salvation in Christ that cannot be contained. It cannot. When you have the great news, say when World War II was over, when the Japanese surrendered, or when the Berlin Wall fell, that news traveled so fast around many communities across the globe that mere minutes after the announcement, people were out in the streets dancing and hugging and crying. War is over, the wall has fallen. But not everyone thought that was good news. And many who hear the gospel now don't think the gospel is that kind of good news either. In the other version of this parable in Matthew, Jesus says, many are called but few are chosen. But for those who Christ is enlightening minds to their sin and misery and showing them the beauty of the gospel all through the power of the Holy Spirit, they're not gonna hear better news than that. We have a free offer of the gospel both to those who will hate it and to those who think it is great news. But our responsibility is not to determine who's a sheep and who isn't, but to get that gospel message out and publish peace from Zion. Even if it carries a stench of death to the dying, as Paul tells us, or the aroma of life and peace for those God is calling to Him. We have no better news. Christ and Him crucified. Jesus Christ shedding his blood on the cross, doing the work of salvation, both in his life and in his death, offered freely to the sinner for all who will come and believe him. Great news. Christ's work has opened access. And access looks like a banquet. And so as we have been compelled to come in, as we have been helpless and needy as sinners, or even physically, in all ways, as we have been compelled to come in, so we enter in by God's grace, through faith in Jesus Christ. We were once in that situation too, and so we must freely offer it to others, ourselves. And for all those who come in, they don't just become insiders, You can be a member here, you can get a little name tag. You don't just get a name tag. When you enter into Christ's banquet by faith, believing in Him, you become a son and a daughter of a great God. Amen. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, you have brought us near by the blood of the cross. You have ended the dividing wall of hostility between yourself and man, and we have not just been reconciled, but been made children, adopted into the number of the people of God. Lord, many of us, most of us descend from Gentiles. Lord, your precious promises came through your apostles and your missionaries, and our ancestors have believed, and our parents have believed, and even we have believed, and we're thankful. You didn't have to save us, you did not have to invite us in, but you did. What great, magnificent promises. Oh, the depths of the wisdom and knowledge of God. Lord, your judgments are unsearchable, and your grace more so. Lord, I pray that you would lead us to conclude our worship with grateful hearts. And Lord, if there's anyone who has not accepted the invitation, even if they have committed to accepting and coming, that you would draw them to yourself. Not because they're worth it, not because we are powerful in and of ourselves to make them come, but because you're good and you lavish upon us grace upon grace. Lord, we ask all these things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, amen.