Grace Thoughts

Guest (Male): Hello friends, welcome to Grace Thoughts, the radio ministry of Grace Connection Church with Pastor Tim Kelley. Grace Thoughts has been dedicated to preaching a clear Gospel of Grace for over 20 years. Here is Pastor Kelley.

Tim Kelley: Now the three guests, his key guests, bowed out for three different reasons. Now this is again the Lord just giving a parable here. First guest had bought some land and he had to inspect it. This is equivalent of saying, "Hey, I just bought a house I've never seen, I've got to go check it out."

I don't know how many people buy houses they've never seen. Obviously, maybe an investor. I don't know. Different examples here. But it's as absurd what the Lord's trying to bring out. The excuse the man had here, it didn't happen. This was an obvious snub.

He's basically saying and using an excuse, "Hey, I just bought a house." What do you mean you just bought a house? You just bought a major purchase and you don't even know what you bought and you want to go check it out? Really? And you can see the point putting on the banquet sort of saying that in this Hebrew tongue.

Really? And it was an obvious snub. He just didn't want to go. It didn't happen then, it doesn't happen now. Another excuse was someone just bought five yoke of oxen. Same ridiculous excuse. You would not buy an oxen team without watching them work together.

In other words, you could get some oxen, really good beasts, but if they don't work together well, you're defeating the purpose of having an oxen team. It's like driving a car. You wouldn't buy a car without taking it for a test drive, would you? You wouldn't buy a used car, wouldn't buy a new car without taking it for a test drive. So it's the same thing. It's a ridiculous excuse. It's like buying a car, used car unseen. It's another obvious snub.

So these weren't just guys with legitimate excuses. These were like little jabs in the guy's face. "No, we don't want to go to your banquet and I'm giving you a lame excuse. You know it's a lame excuse, but you have no really social thing to do but to let us slide on it." Third excuse, "I just got married and I'm sort of busy with my new wife."

Now the language in this is actually pretty crude when you look at the Hebrew here. This was the crudest and the rudest reason yet. It was there's a lot of subtle innuendo here. It was a crude snub and it was an offensive snub that was purposed to show great disrespect to the host.

So you have three friends and they made three they backed down on three different occasions for three sort of ridiculous excuses. Now the host could retaliate by exposing what the guests did and basically sullying their reputation. He could go behind their back. When you get offended, we have a tendency to do this.

We want to go behind the person who offended us's back and say, "You know that person, this is what they said to me or they did this to me." And so we can turn at least a few other people's opinions about the people that hurt our feelings or the people who treated us so disrespectfully or something like that. That has gone on for 2,000 years, will go on till the Lord comes back.

But he didn't do that because what they did was so socially on the edge that this banquet the man putting on the banquet could have exposed what they did and brought some social pressure down on them, brought some social clouds down around them and probably the same circle of life that they had would look at what you know, "You said what? You did what?"

And they would have probably paid socially for what they did. But they didn't do that. There was a seeming collusion of the guests. That's insinuated in the language. In other words, the three guests sort of knew each other, obviously going to the same owner, and they colluded together and said, "We're going to all bow out of this."

Now how we respond, I just want to say this, to the offense of others is critical. It can make us or break us. When people offend us and they will and they do. I've been offended plenty through the years. I hope that I have not offended people but I have, I know I have. Some not on purpose. I'll say it's all not on purpose.

But how we respond to that is huge. Because if we respond wrong to and I let that offense take me out and the only thing I'm thinking is self-justification, revenge, getting back at them, wrecking their reputation by go back circling them however I do that. This might be the biggest challenge facing the American church.

When you put this setting inside of an American church and just like our church, Grace Connection Church, and you'll get the little political things happening and the territorial things going on and then this person will offend this person and that person will offend that person and "I don't want to work with that person" and "I don't want to work with that person."

And this spins and spins and spins. And before you know it, there's division in the local assembly, subtle, not so subtle division in the local assembly. If you can't work with somebody, figure it out. Figure out why you can't. Go to them in person. Resolve issues. We talk about this stuff a lot and it's amazing how little it gets done.

Even folks that walked with God for a long time have a difficult time actually I don't even want to use this term but it's the only term that comes to my mind—confronting a situation and speaking in love and hearing and being humble and resolving issues. And just finding out like, "What you said this, what did you mean by that?" Somebody barks at you, "Why did you treat me that way?"

Don't go to four people over here, "He barked at me, he said this, he snapped." Go to them. "Hey, you treated me this way. I didn't appreciate that. People don't treat me like they people don't snap at me and bark at me but you did." And make them accountable and give them a chance to fix it instead of going to three other people, four other people.

And do it right then. Don't wait two weeks. Don't let it fester. Go right then and resolve. You don't get any resolution, then slander them. No, I'm kidding. Do it right then and you'll be shocked how many times things get resolved right then. It was just a moment of weakness, emotional moment or something like that.

See this guy he didn't do that. He repressed his anger and he turned it into grace. That's what I love about it. There was a thought back then that only the rich, the respected and the noble would be at the Messianic Banquet. The Gentiles and the socially repressed Jews would be left out. There was some thought that way.

So he said, "Compel them to come in." And that's pretty strong language. The word compel in the original the word compel here in our English is actually pretty strong word. It means I can't use the term force in a sense. This was the word this verse this was one of the verses used to justify the Inquisition.

Compel them to come in. Go into the world and compel them to come into the Kingdom of God. You're going to make them come into the Kingdom of God. Just like ISIS tries to make you come into the Muslim world. And that was this word was this was taken can mean even with violence. This verse was taken out of context quite a lot back then.

In essence saying, "Don't take no for an answer." Beg them. "No, we want you to be here." Let them know this is the owner telling the servant—let them know I want them. Let them know they are welcome here. They are the ones I want to feast with. You've got to convince them of that.

The servants, they've got to know I want to feast with them. I want them at my banquet. They have to know that. Two groups of people here: the inner circle Jews and yes even the Gentiles. Those dogs had been invited. The hedges were where the poorest of the laborers worked. They actually would sleep in the hedges. There was a safety there. They could hide under the hedges and sleep there at night.

So compel them to go in. Go into the highways, the byways and the hedges. And who do we want who do we want at this banquet? We want the poor and the crippled and the blind and the lame. And I would probably just if I could put them all into one blender and blend them together I'd say the simple, the innocent, the non-arrogant, the open. Compel them to come in.

The people who just want truth, who want the who's not playing religious games, who's not playing these social games. Compel them to come in. See God invites us all in our present state, if I can use this term very lightly, but in the sense to party with him. To feast with him.

He's saying come no matter what state you are, just the way that you are. No matter what you did last week, four hours ago, three hours ago, whatever spiritual state you may be in, just come. Come to the banquet because you'll never know how welcome you are until you come to the banquet.

You'll never know how important you are until you come to the banquet. You'll never know how special you are until you come to the banquet. You'll never feel secure until you come to the banquet. You'll never feel like you have a real healthy identity until you come to the banquet. You need to go to the banquet and meet the Banquet Master there. Then you'll find out who you really are.

But as long as you stay out there on the highways and the byways as the poor and the lame and the and the blind, as long as you stay out there and that's your identity, then you'll never realize what it's like to live at the banquet table. Come to the banquet. The door's been flung open. You've had a personal invitation by God Almighty, personal invitation by the Banquet Master to come feast with him.

He asked your presence to be there. He wants you to be there. You don't have to sneak in through the back door. You don't have to beg your way in. You don't have to even get cleaned up or anything. Just come in. I'll clean you up once you get in there. You come in, I'll freshen you up, I'll give you a new look, a new smell, everything. Just come in. Just the way that you are.

And this is again this thing of extravagant grace just pours out of this. If you have a broken life, this means much those of us with our lives together maybe we haven't made any game-changing bad decisions. Some of us have. Maybe some of us made some little ones but we recovered from them.

Maybe I don't battle with some moral highs and lows, ethical highs and lows. Maybe I don't struggle with those things anymore. Maybe my Christian life has found a nice little easy cruise control where I can just sort of do the moral, do the ethical, do the social, do it all. He wants you to just come in. You don't find freedom until you banquet there.

We desperately my friends real authenticity, we need growing and compelling walks with God in these final days. We don't need perfect people because there aren't any. But we need people to own it when they've got to own it. People that fix things when they should fix things with others. People that speak truth in love, who lay down their life for the least of them in the world.

We want to present to this world the God of the Bible. I'm closing with this. Not a God created in our own fabricated religious minds. Not a God that we filter through our own earthly parents. Not a God that we we make socially or culturally. No, we want to present to people a true God of the Bible and we want to live in a way that reveals a true God of the Bible.

A God that invites anybody and everyone just the way that they are to come and feast with him. He's asking us, "Go compel them to come in. Beg them to come in. Ask them to come in. They're welcome." "But God, shouldn't that person fix this first?" "How can they fix it unless they're in the banquet?"

"Shouldn't this person clean up first?" "They don't get clean unless they go to the banquet." Banqueting with the Master is what fixes us and this is the parable the Lord wanted to get across. These three people that stayed out there and you can use those excuses in any way you want. They're the ones who rejected him.

He goes, "You don't understand. I didn't come from those people. I'll come I'll get the lame and I'll get the weak and I'll get the blind. Those are the people I'll fill my house up with. And those are the people I'll change the world with too."

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Grace Thoughts, the radio ministry of Grace Connection Church and Pastor Tim Kelley. If you enjoyed this program, visit graceconnectionchurch.com for more episodes and resources. Join us next time for more Grace Thoughts.