The Invitation

The Moral of the Story Part 3: The Invitation

Introduction:

We are going to pick up where we left off two weeks ago in . We talked about the moment in Scripture where Jesus is actually sitting around the dinner table at the home of a very prominent Pharisee. People are jockeying for position at the table and Jesus gives this lesson on humility and says it doesn’t matter where you sit if you know where you stand with Jesus. Jesus continues a conversation around that table.

Luke 14:15–24 NLT

15 Hearing this, a man sitting at the table with Jesus exclaimed, “What a blessing it will be to attend a banquet in the Kingdom of God!” 16 Jesus replied with this story: “A man prepared a great feast and sent out many invitations. 17 When the banquet was ready, he sent his servant to tell the guests, ‘Come, the banquet is ready.’ 18 But they all began making excuses. One said, ‘I have just bought a field and must inspect it. Please excuse me.’ 19 Another said, ‘I have just bought five pairs of oxen, and I want to try them out. Please excuse me.’ 20 Another said, ‘I just got married, so I can’t come.’ 21 “The servant returned and told his master what they had said. His master was furious and said, ‘Go quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and invite the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.’ 22 After the servant had done this, he reported, ‘There is still room for more.’ 23 So his master said, ‘Go out into the country lanes and behind the hedges and urge anyone you find to come, so that the house will be full. 24 For none of those I first invited will get even the smallest taste of my banquet.’ ”

When we read this, it is very important that we remember the cultural context where this was happening.

Jesus was Jewish.

Jewish was not just a label He allowed to be slapped on Him during his earthly life. It wasn’t just a footnote in his story. Being Jewish is central to his teaching and to his ministry and if we miss the historical cultural context, we will miss the meaning of some of his teaching. Jesus was born at a specific time in a specific place with a cultural world view. And if we don’t fully understand the culture, we can miss the meaning. For example, when I read this story, all those excuses sound perfectly plausible to me. I have said no to dinner for far less noble reasons! Some of you who are introverts say no to dinner because you just can’t handle one more conversation that day. So if we read this against our cultural context, we think that master is just having a hard day, why is he getting so ticked off? He is just a little bit extreme. So I want to spend a little bit of time unpacking the cultural setting.

So when the first guy comes at the beginning of the story, he was sitting there with Jesus saying what an honor it will be to attend a banquet in the kingdom of God. What everyone around the table expected Jesus to do at that point as an important Jewish religious leader, He was expected to stay something along the lines of, O that we might keep the law in such a precise way that we will be counted worthy to sit with the Messiah when that day comes. But that is not what Jesus said. He throws a curve ball. He tells a story that has a very familiar setting to the audience but with a very shocking turn of events.

First of all, I think it is exciting that

Jesus talks about the kingdom of God in terms of a banquet, a feast, a party.

I think the church has done a remarkable job of making the kingdom of God sound like something very boring. When we think about heaven or eternity or kingdom of God, a lot of times we think about the clouds and the harps. The picture that Jesus paints here is much more exciting than what his followers can paint. It is a banquet, a party, this lavish feast that God is inviting people to. So He tells this story of a man throwing a party and sends out invitations.

Now, in Middle Eastern culture, there were always two invitations issued.

There was

The first invitation which was issued days before the feast

was to happen so that the host could get a head count. These were massive extravagant events and they wanted to make sure they had plenty of food. The party we are talking about here is on another level. They are carefully picking the meats and then pairing the meats with the wine and making sure they have enough food for everybody and then what would happen on the day of the feast,

The servant would be sent out to tell the guests that the meal was ready and to escort them back to the place of the meal

(this was the second invitation). The escort, the travel to the home of the host was an event in and of itself. It was often accompanied with musicians or a band. It was a big deal. Yet the servant gets to the house with that second invitation and all of a sudden, these people who had already committed are not ready to come.

In our culture I think we experience the same thing. There is always two invitations. Somebody invites us to come to their house for dinner, and we say yes, and then when the day comes and it is time to go to dinner, we go to the house and then once we get there, we might hang around in the living room and talk, but there is that moment that comes when the second invitation is offered. Dinner is ready. Or it is time to eat. There is always that second invitation but in order to escalate this so that we understand what is really going on culturally.

Imagine for a moment that you’ve been invited to a State Dinner at the White House. So you get that invitation and you get dressed and you go to the White House, you drive through security, you go up and your name is checked off the list and you go in. Then after a reception with the President and the visiting Head of State, the President and the Head of State will descend the staircase and the Marine band begins to play Hail to the Chief to announce the President’s arrival and then the Star Spangled Banner is played and then the National Anthem of the visiting Head of State is playing and then there is a big receiving line and you get in that receiving line and you go through and in that receiving line, the President introduces you to the visiting Head of State and then you begin to make your way into the dining room and you have a place card and a menu on your plate where a five course meal awaits you. If, at that moment, you say, ‘Mr. President, by the way, I can’t have dinner tonight,’ that is going to be a little bit odd! And your excuse better be very good! That is the equivalent that servant felt when these people said they couldn’t come.

So let’s examine their excuses for a moment.

The first said he had bought a field and he needed to go check it out.

Again, on first reading that sounds legitimate. But he had already said he would come to dinner. And then did he really buy a field without checking it out first? That would be like me on my way home one day saying, ‘Ryan, I am going to be late because I just bought a house and I need to go check it out.’ Especially in this context and in this time, it is highly likely that if you had just bought a field, you would have already inspected every geologic feature imaginable before you bought it. And if you didn’t do that, it will be there tomorrow and you can check it out tomorrow.

Another guy said he bought 10 oxen and he needed to go try them out.

Are you telling me you did not test drive those oxen before you bought them?

Then another one says he just got married.

This one actually is the most dishonoring because the person is not even asking to be excused, he just says he can’t come. Here is what I don’t understand, when you are asked several days ahead of time to come to a dinner and you said yes, that wedding in that culture had been planned months in advance, didn’t you realize those two things would conflict?

These excuses are silly and not just that, it was dishonoring to the host. See, the people listening to this story would have recognized that these are excuses and are not valid. These excuses did not represent legitimate distractions or inconveniences. They don’t even represent lame excuses to get out of something they don’t want to do. The listeners of this story would have recognized that there were deliberate attempts to publicly humiliate and to bring disgrace and dishonor upon the host.

So when the servant returned with the news, the master got very angry. In fact, it says he became furious. When we understand what is going on, we understand that this isn’t a guy who gets ticked because his buddies found something better to do that night. He recognized that it was deliberate humiliation and dishonoring so it is not shocking that he became angry. What is shocking is what he does with his anger. The master in this parable is equivalent to God. We don’t really like to think about God being angry but there are over 100 references to God’s anger in the Bible and they are not all in the Old Testament. So we have to do something with that.

There are two views on God’s anger.

There is one view that says we have to be on our best behavior because God gets angry at us. Then there are others of you that don’t even like to think about God’s anger. You don’t understand how a God who is loving and merciful and full of blessing could ever be angry. So we tend to cringe or read over it quickly. I think both of those views are wrong. I believe we miss it. I believe that God’s wrath and God’s grace actually work together in a very beautiful way. I don’t believe that God’s wrath and his grace are at opposite ends of the spectrum of his character. I believe they work together. From the Garden of Eden to the cross, we see God’s wrath and grace showing up together at the same time. His wrath activates his grace and his grace is always activated for our good. And this story is another example of that.

So what happens when the master gets angry? It results in an explosion of grace. He said go fill my house. He told his servants to go get the lame and crippled and the blind and the poor and bring them all in. It might be hard for us to get this, we think this sounds pretty terrible but in that culture, those people were considered to be impure. You didn’t want those people around your table. It went beyond discomfort to be around them. It was to the point of disgust. You were risking your reputation and your spiritual purity by having those people at the table. Yet the master says to go out and get those people that no one wants around their table and bring them to my table. Not only that, they find that there is still more room at the table so the master says go out into the country lanes and bring them all.

Just imagine this scene with me for a moment. The master invites these people to his table and the crippled are hobbling to get there as fast as they can and there are two servants carrying a lame man and another servant guiding the blind man and people coming from all over to the master’s table. It is the kingdom of God we are talking about. This is the heart of the master. In the face of public humiliation, he retaliates with grace. When the master’s hospitality has been rejected, he just sends hospitality out further. And when his name has been dishonored, he chooses to honor the least honored people in society.

So when Jesus tells this story to his dinner guests, it is a reminder to some of the religious leaders, some of the very prominent, well-respected Pharisees. He was challenging their posture before God and He was challenging their perception of God’s kingdom.

I believe that those questions transcend culture and hit us today. The Master has invited us to his table. How can we not come?

I think there are about four different groups of people here this morning and when we talk about why we don’t come, I think there are four places we might be or postures we might have.

Some of you are here this morning and you haven’t responded because

You just don’t understand.

You don’t know what you’ve been invited to or who is doing the inviting. You see, God is not inviting you to a religious observance. He is not inviting you to good behavior. He is not inviting you to morality. He is not inviting you to just be an extension of your parents’ faith. He is inviting you into the family. He is inviting you around the table. Maybe you don’t understand who is inviting you. It is not just your parents inviting you or your friends inviting you or your pastor inviting you. God Himself is inviting you to his table.

How would your life be different if you believed that Jesus wanted you to feast in his presence? Dare to believe that Jesus invites you. Dare to believe that Jesus invites you.

One of my favorite authors, CS Lewis, says “Our Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us. Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

Know what you have been invited too and who is inviting you.

Then there is a second group of people and you know what you have been invited to and you know who is doing the inviting but quite frankly

You just don’t care.

There is so much preoccupation with the distractions and other priorities in your life and what you don’t realize is that it is not just that those excuses pale in comparison to the opportunity that has been offered to you but what you fail to realize is that our behavior is actually an offense to God. You see, some of us want to do just enough religious activity to keep God happy so we keep one foot in the banquet and one foot out wherever else we want to go. We want to follow Jesus closely enough to see Him but not closely enough to be changed by Him. We pay attention to God when it is convenient for us but we don’t pay Him the honor or our commitment. We know what we have been invited and who has invited us but we just don’t care. And I’m getting in the business of those in that category today. Because what we don’t realize is in those moments where we are one foot in and one foot out, we are not just annoying God, it is an insult to his character. It is a rejection of his hospitality. We need to understand the weight of our response. What I would call you to this weekend is a response of repentance. Repentance really just means to turn around and go another way. Don’t go to the field or the oxen, come to the banquet. Turn around and go a better way. Dare to believe that Jesus wants all of you.

A third group hasn’t responded to the invitation of Jesus because

You honestly didn’t even know you were wanted.

Maybe you have been told by parents or coaches or teachers or friends that you are never going to be good enough. So you might feel like you are one of the crippled or the lame or the blind in this story and you feel like you are too broken to be wanted to God. Or you feel like you are too far away, that even if God wanted you there is no way He would go that far of a distance to get to you. You can’t imagine that God would come looking under the hedge where you are hiding and yet we see in the story that the servants are sent out to go far out. Dare to believe that Jesus believes in you. No sin is too far for God’s grace. No wound is too deep for God’s grace. And you don’t have to make the journey alone. There is a campus pastor a small group leader or someone willing to make the journey with you. If you don’t hear anything else this weekend and you have never responded to the invitation of Jesus because you didn’t know you were wanted, hear this, dare to believe that Jesus believes in you.

The fourth group of people are the ones who have received and responded and we are sitting at the table. We are at the banquet and we are excited and what we have to understand is we actually play two roles in the story.

We are not just the invited guests, we are also the servant of the Master.

We are called to go out. I love it says the man sends out many invitations and I don’t think this was a throw-away word for Jesus. I think the word ‘many’ was very intentionally chosen. He said the master wanted his house to be full. When we look at the original language, we see that ‘house’ doesn’t refer to a physical dwelling so much as it refers to relational connections. So quite literally what the master is saying is he wants his family to be big.

Conclusion:

So the moral of the story is not just that

We have been invited to the table, how could we not come.

The moral of the story is

How dare we come alone? Who are you bringing with you?

If you are already at the table, who are you bringing with you?

I think a lot of times in the church we act a little bit like travel agents. We sit in the climate controlled comfort of our offices telling people where to go and how to get there and what they should experience on their faith journey. But that is not what servants are called to do. Servants are called to lace up their boots and strap on their backpacks and to go on the journey with people. Who are you bringing with you? Maybe you need to bring people to Alpha or to small group. I want to challenge us in terms of who we think is worthy of our invitation. Are you only inviting people into the kingdom of God that are people that look like you? Do you think God likes the people you like and hates the people you hate? Do the people that sit around your table all look like you or are we willing to go after people that look very different than us. Do the people who matter to God matter to you? Are you willing to invite people who can’t give anything back? Are we willing to carry them if necessary?

So don’t be so impressed with yourself that you don’t have time for people who aren’t impressed by you. We’ve got to let people who matter to God matter to us. And we have to do whatever it takes to bring them to the table.

Dare to believe that Jesus likes people who are not like you.

The moral of the story,

The Master has invited us to his table. How could we not come? And the table has room for more.

The night that Jesus was betrayed, He sat around the table with his best friends and shared a meal. It was the Passover meal. It was a celebration to celebrate and remember the deliverance from slavery from Egypt. On that particular night as Jesus was celebrating that meal with his disciples, He told them the next time they do this, they will remember Him. So for 2,000 years, the followers of Jesus have come around that table. We call it different names, but it is a moment where we come once again to the table and we remember the sacrifice of Jesus. It is a moment for us to know Him and to be known by Him. It is a moment for us to honor Him and to show honor to those that are part of his family. It is a moment when we realize that we are all invited and we are all forgiven.

The Master has invited you to his table. How could you not come? There is room for more, don’t come alone.