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Wedding Banquet part 1 : - Coggle Diagram
Wedding Banquet part 1 :
The Reluctant Guests
One had bought a field and had to go and see it; another had bought some new oxen and was keen to try them out; an- other had married a wife and refused to leave her.
When the day came, a servant was sent out to summon the guests, and they all began to make excuses.
Now not to provide adequate hospitality was a grave discourtesy but to refuse offered hospitality was a deliberate insult. So the host took steps to fill the empty places at the banquet.
He sent out his servant to call in the under privileged from the streets and back lanes of the city.
If the invited would not come then some who perhaps never in their lives had had the chance to sit at a banquet must become guests.
The Banquet of God
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The Jews believed that when the Messiah came and the new age dawned one great event would be a banquet at which all sat down.
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Too often the charge against Christianity has been that it took all the light, the zest, the joy out of life. Men have too often seen Christianity as that which made them do all the things they did not want to do and abandon all the things they would have liked to do.
The New Guests of God
They were the chosen people. Their history was moulded to enable them to recognize and accept God’s Son when He came into the world.
In point of fact they refused the invitation and there- fore others entered into the places reserved for them.
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They stand for the sinners who, contrary to all their expectations, found in Jesus a welcoming friend.
But after they have come in the servant reports, “Still there is room,” and yet more unexpected and unexpecting guests are gathered in from the highways and the hedges.
Excuses
The parable tells us that the invited guests “all alike began to make excuses” (Luke 14: 18). The excuses are significant.
The first said, “I have bought a field and I must go out and see it” (Luke 14: 18). That is the excuse of the man
To whom business comes first. It is possible to become so obsessed with the activities of the world that the thought of the unseen things gets crowded out altogether and no time is left for prayer, worship and devotion.
For a while, for instance, they may come to Church and worship with fidelity; then some new activity comes into life, some new friendship emerges, some new possession takes up their attention, and the claims of worship are abandoned for the something new.
That is precisely the value of Sunday. If it were not for Sunday and for the call to worship how often would we think of God at all? Sunday is a summons to think of other things than earthly activities.