Conclusion Of Entertained By A Pharisee

What lame excuses! A field or livestock are normally examined before they are bought, so no real urgency exists to look at them afterward. Similarly, a person's marriage should not prevent him from accepting such an important invitation. So on hearing about these excuses, the master becomes angry and commands his slave:

"'Go out quickly into the broad ways and the lanes of the city, and bring in here the poor and cripples and blind and lame.' In time the slave said, 'Master, what you ordered has been done, and yet there is room.' And the master said to the slave, 'Go out into the roads and the fenced-in places, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. . . . None of those men that were invited shall have a taste of my evening meal.

What situation is described by the illustration? Well, "the master" providing the meal represents Jehovah God; "the slave" extending the invitation, Jesus Christ; and the "grand evening meal," the opportunities to be in line for the Kingdom of the heavens.

Those first to receive the invitation to come in line for the Kingdom were, above all others, the Jewish religious leaders of Jesus' day. However, they rejected the invitation. Thus, beginning particularly at Pentecost 33 C.E., a second invitation was extended to the despised and lowly ones of the Jewish nation. But not enough responded to fill the 144,000 places in God's heavenly Kingdom. So in 36 C.E., three and a half years later, the third and final invitation was extended to uncircumcised non-Jews, and the gathering of such ones has continues into our day. Luke 14:1-24.

Next time:The Responsibility Of Discipleship

The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived, 1991