A few things happened before we get to our passage. First Jesus heals someone with dropsy on the Sabbath, no less. Later, someone speaks to Jesus, and he just blanked him. Jesus sees to the heart. The message is that you accept a general invitation but when the specific invite comes you treat it with contempt.
The master sends out for the poor, blind and lame. He is angry. They had said yes, but it was all a lie. Get out to the people who wouldn’t normally be invited. Make them come in. They are sent outside the city. They would not have been expecting an invitation. It wasn’t beat them with as stick so they would come! It means that people who say “don’t be so ridiculous, how could I be invited” you had to persuade them that it was genuine.
Are you so sure that you are coming to the banquet? The religious leaders who were making platitudes would not come. You must accept the specific invitation from the Messiah. When that call came, the Jews weren’t having any of it. Being an insider in the Christian culture is no certainty whatsoever of a place at the banqueting table of the kingdom of God. Where is your heart tonight? Does it revolve around your possessions? The banquet is free but its not cheap. It cost everything. God’s own son hung on a cross so that those who believed in Jesus’ substitutionary death would be saved. Even being a leader in the church isn’t enough. You have to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. The way in is through Christ and him alone. The religiously complacent will not be saved.
Not everyone feels religious complacency. Many people know the gospel message and know they are rebels, but they feel so inferior that they can’t come back in. Who will go for them? What about those who just don’t have a clue. Go beyond the people who know the gospel to find people who don’t know a thing about the gospel. Who is going to go for them? Some of them will say, “no, you have come to the wrong place, it couldn’t possibly be true for me” Somebody told you. Who are you going to tell? V23 so my house will be FULL. There will be no empty seat. God knows them all.
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