Dwight L. Moody once preached a sermon from this parable; something I’m going to tell you about at the end of this sermon. His title was “Excuses” and as a sort of salute to the great preacher I’ve given mine the same title.
I’ve never seen his sermon so any resemblance in this sermon to his is purely due to the fact that it comes from the same passage of scripture. But I had no qualms about borrowing his title since excuses are really what the parable is all about.
Well, on second thought, the excuses men make are really the secondary focus of this passage. We’ll get to the primary one in a few minutes. But let’s talk about the excuses first.
‘THE SKIN OF A REASON STUFFED WITH A LIE’
Early twentieth century evangelist, Billy Sunday, called excuses ‘the skin of a reason stuffed with a lie’.
In this parable we’re given several very good samples of what Sunday was talking about.
When a feast was to be given the tradition was to invite guests and get R.S.V.P.s from them so that the host would know how many to prepare for and how much food to supply.
So when the dinner was ready a second invitation would be sent out telling those who had promised to come that everything was ready.
We can imagine, and some of us don’t need to imagine because we know the feeling of having been told by some number of friends that they would come to a function we’ve planned and then had none of them show up.
It hurts and it inconveniences.
But in the times these people lived feasts were a big deal and they were treated like a big deal. A great amount of money would be spent on the best wines and foods and the appropriate number of animals would be sacrificed to feed the expected crowd.
So we can understand why a host would be made angry if a large number of people responded positively to the initial invitation then at the last minute bowed out with a bunch of ridiculous excuses.
In fact, one commentator pointed out that in the Arab world such a move would constitute a declaration of war; something to keep in mind as we discuss the spiritual types in Jesus’ story.
Let’s look first at the excuses offered here.
The first one says he has just purchased a piece of land and he has to go look at it.
Now these feasts were usually held late in the cool of the day and into the evening and even the late night. So it would be a bad time to go examine a piece of property anyway. Remember, there was no industry, there were no halogen lights, no flashlights; it would have been very dark anywhere away from a candle or lantern lit room.
But more absurd than the idea of going out in the dark to look at grass and rocks is the implication that the guy bought land without looking at it in the first place. In that culture the buying and selling of real estate involved a lot of dickering and bargaining and examining and stalling. If the purchase has already been made, which the man clearly indicates in verse 18, then the host can be certain that the man has already spent a great deal of time looking at and probably walking over this piece of land. Therefore the excuse is tantamount to saying outwardly, ‘I’ve changed my mind and I’d rather do almost anything else than go to your feast’.
Excuse number two. The man has bought five yoke of oxen. I think that means 10 oxen. That was a large purchase and in fact probably indicates the guy is pretty well off financially in order to buy 10 work animals at once.
When was the last time you heard of someone purchasing a new car without test driving it? Even a used car?
Let’s just assume for the moment that this man had so much money he sent someone else to make the deal for him. Well, if that’s the case then he probably never has to harness himself to the plow either. He’d have others doing that also.
Even if he is the one who will use the oxen, surely they will be safe and warm and fed for a few hours in the barn while he goes to the feast he has already committed himself to.
Another lame excuse.
Excuse number three. “I’ve married a wife”. Ok, considering the culture the wife probably wasn’t invited anyway. Just the man.
But if he just got married then he must have accepted the first invitation to the feast prior to his wedding. And unless it was a shotgun wedding (and they didn’t have shotguns then), he would have known about and been planning the wedding before getting the invitation to the feast.
So either this guy is one of the biggest social bunglers ever recorded in history or he is just plain rude and insulting and deserves to be an object of the host’s anger.
So where is Jesus going with this so far?
Well, in order to get the picture we really should go back to verse 15. Actually, let me give you a brief overview of this chapter so far.
Jesus is at the home of a leading Pharisee for dinner and as usual there is a large gathering, all wanting to scrutinize Jesus.
He heals a man with dropsy which they don’t approve of because it’s the Sabbath and healing is considered work. We’ve had opportunities to discuss the absurdity of this attitude before so I’ll move on.
Jesus gives them a verbal teaching about humility and finishes with a verse most of us are familiar with: “For everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled, and he who humbles himself shall be exalted.”
A very appropriate declaration from the mouth of the very One who, “…being found in appearance as a man,…humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name…” Phil 2:8, 9
He then goes on, addressing Himself directly to the man who had invited Him to dinner, and tells him that the blessings to be revealed at the resurrection will be to those who were good and kind to those who were unable to repay, not to those who only served those who could serve in return.
Now we come to verse 15 where one of the men at the table, hearing Jesus refer to the resurrection, blurts out this joyful declaration that happy times are coming for all who will be at the feast table in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Probably said around a mouthful of dates and Jewish rye.
The prevailing assumption among the Jews of Jesus’ day was that when the Messiah came He would set up His kingdom on earth and all the good Jews who had struggled to obey the Law, as their reward, would be a part of this perpetual feast of celebration to the exclusion of less deserving Jews and certainly the gentile world.
That is why verse 16 begins with the word ‘But’, and it is why Jesus is telling the parable of the rude men with their ‘…skins of reasons stuffed with lies’.
These men represented the Jews as a nation, who had accepted the first invitation in the sense that they received the Law and the Prophets and were diligent to keep the letter of the Law, watching intently for the coming of the Messiah as they perceived Him to be.
But they were to reject the second invitation from the servant, representing the Servant who calls all who are thirsty to come and drink without cost Jn 7:37, and they are therefore rejected by the angry and offended host, just as the Jewish nation was set aside by the Father and His invitation to His ‘salvation feast’ was sent out to others.
THE INVITATION BROADENED
Now there seems to be two groups indicated in the host’s instructions to his servant in verses 21 and 23.
In verse 21 he says to go to the streets and lanes of the city and bring in the poor, crippled, blind and lame.
This, Jesus had been doing in Israel and would continue to do until His crucifixion.
Luke 7:22 “And He answered and said to them, “Go and report to John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have the gospel preached to them.
Those were the people the Pharisees saw as undesirable and would have shut them out of the Kingdom (Matt 23:13), yet they were the ones responding with joy to Jesus as He went about teaching them and calling them to Himself.
So now they were invited to the feast and were responding but in verse 22 the servant tells the owner of the house that there’s still plenty of room, so the Master sends him outside of the city to the highways and the hedges, to the homeless people who have no shelter at all.
But in their case it’s not an invitation. He says ‘compel’ them to come in. There is a sense of urgency and perhaps an inherent warning to avoid the folly of those ungrateful men who were first invited.
This would be a reference to the gentiles who did not come under the ‘shelter’ of the house of Israel, who did not have the Law and the prophets, who were outside the commonwealth of Israel.
The Apostle Paul would later write to the gentile believers in Ephesus:
"remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. " (Ephesians 2:12, 13, NASB95)
What should excite joy in us, Christians, and fill us with wonder and gratitude that we serve such a loving God, is that in the story the master of the house was sending his servant out to find these people for this reason, “so that my house may be filled”.
And the reason it should strike us so is that the homeowner is representing God the Father, who desires us and desired us enough to give His only Son so that whoever believes in Him would not perish but have everlasting life.
‘…that my house may be filled.’ Someone has said ‘both nature and grace abhor a vacuum’.
And Christian you can rest assured that when we all get there and are gathered in that place where righteousness dwells, we are going to find that every place is filled. There will be enough chairs but there will not be an empty chair.
God knows those who are His and He continues to call them in and when the last one has accepted His gracious invitation that is when He will make the announcement that is really the main point of this parable.
COME; FOR EVERYTHING IS READY NOW
With a cursory reading the emphasis does seem to be on the excuses. But the stories of Jesus are never to complain or to accentuate the negative. They always lead to the goodness of God and His gracious invitations to eternal life.
Even when He criticized the attitudes and actions of the Pharisees and the Scribes inherent in His words of warning were words of invitation.
It was still not too late for them and even knowing their hearts and the choices they would make, still, He wanted them to know that His Father desired that they repent and live.
Many of them did later on as we can see in John 12:42 and Acts 15:5 but for the moment they were unable to understand that it was not by their diligent keeping of the Law that they were going to secure a place at the Father’s table.
Just as the parable was there to help them see if only they would see, so the Biblical record of the Pharisees and the common Jew and the gentile world of Jesus’ day is given to us as both warning and invitation.
The religious person of our day needs to have his eyes opened to the truth that his religion will not secure him a place in Heaven, but that the invitation goes out from the Father and His guests must come to Him in His time and on His terms.
The religious man thinks he has accepted the invitation by adopting the creeds of the church and entrenching himself in the organizational trappings of works and ritual. But he has not been born from above and therefore rejects the calling of the Servant (capital ‘S’) to come.
The other two groups are represented by those of the true church who receive gladly the word of truth and respond with joyful obedience, and those on the outside who are not under the shelter of the church, who are without God and without hope in the world.
Now as we come to a close I want you to be aware that in the parable the host of the feast used the word ‘compel’.
“…compel them to come in, so that my house may be filled”.
“Compel” = Urgently enlighten them to the necessity and entreat them, meaning implore, beseech, plead with them for their benefit, to come in.
If the people of the highways and the hedges in the parable represent the gentile world, which would be us and anyone who is not a Jew, then what does Jesus’ use of the word ‘compel’ say about a lot of our so called evangelistic efforts in the 21st century?
Christians, as the world grows more and more afraid to be clearly and singularly identified with a particular cause or creed that might be offensive to those of a different view or mindset, the church needs to turn sharply from that path and take up the cross of Christ and follow His leading again.
We do so much talking about penetrating lostness and partnering in ministry and brainstorming ways to reach out to the unchurched so that we might bring them in…
…but as I study and contemplate this parable of our Lord and His choice of words I wonder if we should first be concerned with the many who are already ‘in’ who will never taste of His dinner (vs 24), and then reevaluate our traditional evangelistic methods and begin doing a lot less schmoozing of the unsaved and unchurched and a lot more compelling!
In the Great Commission Jesus didn’t instruct us to go out and find more members for the church, He said to go and make disciples. That process necessarily begins with emphasizing with a sense of urgency their destitute condition and their need and THEN His provision to meet that need.
I promised I’d tell you about Moody’s sermon.
This parable was the text of the last sermon D.L. Moody preached, “Excuses.” It was given on November 23, 1899 in the Civic Auditorium in Kansas City, and Moody was a sick man as he preached. “I must have souls in Kansas City,” he told the students at his school in Chicago. “Never, never have I wanted so much to lead men and women to Christ as I do this time!”
There was a throbbing in his chest, and he had to hold to the organ to keep from falling, but Moody bravely preached the Gospel; and some fifty people responded to trust Christ. The next day, Moody left for home, and a month later he died. Up to the very end, Moody was “compelling them to come in.”
Folks, let’s get honest. Our excuses are skins of reasons stuffed with lies. What if we asked God, in all sincerity of heart, to give us the yearning for Montrose, Colorado that was in Moody’s heart as he preached in Kansas City on November 23rd, 1899?
“Never, never have I wanted so much to lead men and women to Christ as I do this time!”
You don’t have to be a preacher to want that. You only have to be a servant of the Master who is saying, “Come; for everything is ready now.”
And if you are hearing or reading this sermon and you are one who is out on the highway or in the hedges, meaning you’ve never heard and responded to God’s call to come to His salvation feast, then you need to know today that it is not just an invitation. He wants you to know that you must respond to him out of necessity, because apart from Christ you do not have life and you are without hope in this world.
The Apostle Paul once wrote, “…we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were entreating through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become right with God in Him.” II Cor 5:20, 21
That’s what we are also. Ambassadors for Christ. And we implore you, for your good, come to God’s salvation feast. Turn from sin and believe in the death and resurrection of Christ and confess Him as your Lord. No excuses.
Run to Him now and don’t be afraid and don’t hesitate. You have been called to dinner. You need it. And everything has been made ready.
