"God's Open Invitation" Series

The people of Isaiah’s time might have wondered, "What do I have to be thankful for--I don’t have the reality of these promises and prophecy yet, but they did have the HOPE of the coming of Jesus long before it happened. Sometimes HOPE is all we need to make a difference in our lives. We can be thankful as we are WAITING on God. We can be thankful that He cares about us and knows where we are living. He meets us at our point of need. Isaiah tells the people, "In that day they will say, Surely this is our God, we trusted in him and he saved us. This is the Lord, we trusted in him; let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation" (v. 9).

At that time in history I believe this Old Testament prophecy was enough to cause the people to look up, to realize that God was going to prepare the very best for them, they could be thankful and rejoice in whatever circumstances they were currently in. Their salvation was on the way, and it would be abundant just like the table spread for a great Thanksgiving feast. Jesus speaks of this abundance in John 10:10 when he said, "I have come that they might have life and that more abundantly."

The Lord has prepared the best for us, and we are fortunate to live at this time in history. Even though we are surrounded by the overwhelming problems in our society--the terrorism, wars, and natural disasters on the earth, we are each one given the open invitation to come to the Lord and "taste and see that the Lord is good" (Psalm 34:8) also referring to a feast or a banquet.

2. The Response to the Invitation:

STORY: One year before Christmas I invited some friends to our house for Christmas dinner and they said they would come. Their children were all living out of town and wouldn’t be coming home that year. I was looking forward to sharing a nice meal on Christmas with them and went shopping for the groceries and had everything bought and some things prepared ahead of time.

The day before Christmas, I saw this woman. She said, "I was going to call you and cancel out. We would rather stay at home. If we come, we won’t stay long, we want to wait on a call from our son."

I said, "Well, I’ve got all the food bought now. What am I supposed to do with it?"

Well, they did come to the dinner, but it wasn’t very enjoyable and they left almost immediately after that they ate. What a disappointing Christmas it was!!

In Luke the prophecy of Isaiah had come true in part because Jesus had come into the world. The world SHOULD be freed from darkness and ignorance by the light of the gospel. Luke 14 talks again about a feast or a banquet. The invitation went out to many guests, the food was prepared and the host spared nothing. But the invitation was met with a cold indifference. One would think that those invited would have been glad to come to the banquet just as you look forward to celebrating a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner this week. But they weren’t. They were invited and the invitation was followed up by a reminder, "Come, for everything is now ready," but they all alike began to make excuses.