Word of Salvation – Vol. 35 No. 32 – August 1990

 

Invitation To The Feast: The Servants

 

Sermon by Rev. A. I. De Graaf on Matthew 22:3-10
                                                             and Luke 14:17,21-23

Readings: Isaiah 6; Luke 14:16-24.

Singing: 224, Ps. 103, H.2, H.702, 280, H.80:1.

 

God invites unworthy people to a feast!

A Wedding banquet; a wonderful party of love and joy…!  That, says God, is what His kingdom is like!  But even then there are those who do not like the Bridegroom, who even hate Him, and so they come with excuses.  They reckon they have more important things to do.  They couldn’t be bothered.

Now, today, when we once more look at this parable told by the Lord Jesus, we shall watch the servants of that Master.
 – Who are they?
 – What do they have to do, and
 – What happens to them, as they go about their business?

Servants.

Today we would call them employees, but in the original Greek we read a word that’s more like “slaves”.

Of themselves, they are not important.  What matters is their Lord, and the plans He has.

They are sent out to do his will and there is no room for argument, or strikes, or negotiations about awards and wages.

No, but have a good look nevertheless at how this Lord deals with these slaves of his.  He wants more from them than “do-as-you-are-told” army-corps-like discipline.  He discusses the matter with them, and makes them partners with Him in His outreach.  His concern may be theirs, His love is to burn in their hearts too, His business is theirs.

That means also, that they cop the hatred some people may have for their Master.  It almost looks at times as if the Lord lets them suffer the brunt of that rebellion; some even lose their life in the process!

Let’s look this afternoon, how these servants work and how they fare in their Lord’s work and world.  We see that these servants…
  (1) invite,
  (2) gather,
  (3) compel and
  (4) suffer.

The master’s servants: (1) they invite.

Yes, how does one recognise a servant of King Jesus?  A minister… is he to be known for his serious face?  An elder, is he to be picked because he is a forbidding and sombre type?

A Christian?  What is the first thing you are to notice about him?  Ask the man in the street, and he will tell you: these servants of God are hypocrites, people who always want to throw cold water on the fun we like to have, and they always judge: this is wrong and that is bad, and she is no good and he…!

I am glad I can say that there are many people who know better: who especially in grief and misery have found out that a child of God, a servant of King Jesus is different: You really find him a help.  Still we have that unfortunate image… of God’s servants as judges, as no-sayers, always with that admonishing finger: WATCH OUT!

But Jesus here tells us something entirely different: The servant of God is one who comes with an invitation.  He comes with a call to the feast, from the most generous of all hosts!

A Christian’s face is to cry, not “BEWARE!” in the first place, but “COME IN!”

After all, what we have to tell is the GOSPEL, the good news of life for the dead, of food for the hungry, of freedom for the prisoners, of the banquet of plenty for all who trust in Jesus God’s Son who paid the full price.  There is room for you… there is room for you all!

It is a wonderful thing to go to people with something in your hands, something to give, namely, the key to everlasting happiness.  That is always the first thing by which a servant of such a merciful God is to be known in the world!

He invites!

Now secondly: (2) He gathers in!

For yes, as we saw before, the incredible and unheard of was happening and still is happening.  God’s own people do not want this offer, this bliss, this life from the dead!

Then there are the excuses.  But then God does not say: too bad, so there won’t be any banquet…!

No, then the servants get a new job to do.  Go onto the street and into the alleyways.  Go into the city square and the country lanes, and gather me guests to sit at my meal!

So the church of the Lord Jesus – as Israel in the past, is not put in the world as a closed club, a nice exclusive coterie of decent and likeminded conservative folks.

No, then the Lord throws all “apartheid” to the winds and the big fish net (another thing Jesus compared the kingdom with!) is to gather the black and the brown, the yellow and the red as well as the white, the learned and the simple, the handicapped as well as the talented.

Come in, all of you!  Please come in, there is room for all of you!!  The gentiles as well as the Jews!  This was not easy!  God’s servant had to be re-schooled to learn this kind of thing.  Think of how God had to persuade Peter to go into Cornelius’ house!  What God now calls clean you shall no longer treat as dirty!!  But still today that is the way God’s servants are to work.

Discipline is a word that comes from “disciple” – and look at the lot Jesus was willing to have as disciples!

Draw them in!  The German word for discipline is “Zucht” and that comes not from a verb meaning to toss out, to push away as we sometimes see discipline.  But it means “to pull”, yes, PULL CLOSE by the tie of love.

And the work of a deacon is not just to scatter money and goodies to whoever can catch.  But it is to show to people the generosity of the great inviting Host, so that these people will end up coming for the great treasure He has to give.  So that the hand which gave them the bread will end up being the hand that gives them Jesus. 

Also in the baptism of our children – yes, the children who have not contributed or achieved anything yet – lies that d wide and all-embracing love of God’s invitation.

The arms of the Most High are stretched out to a rebellious mankind.  Come to my feast, come and be saved you ends of the earth!!  And of course you bring the little ones!

When Rahab was saved, it was for hers faith.  She believed and that, was all she did, says the Bible.  But when God’s servant said: “You’ll be right when you stay in that house with the cord, scarlet as blood, and you will be saved,” she was to take her family members along.  You drag them in, I’ll look after them too…!

These servants of King Jesus, of His generous Father, we saw that, they (1) invite and even (2) gather widely, but now we see (3) they even compel!”

That is a text often misused:
            “Compel them to come in”.
There are Christian thinkers who have used that text to justify the rough way people in the past were tortured and put under the pressure of government and sword to join “the right church”.  Isn’t it for their own good?

I remember as a young minister how I also thought that was the high-handed way I should, with my Session, exercise discipline.  Come down on the creatures like a ton of bricks…!  But the older office-bearers among us know as well as I found out, that it does not work that way.  Because that way you may drag the body in, but what good is that when the heart is left outside?  (As we see when we look at that fellow who did get in but was not dressed in the festive garment!)

No, the Greek has a word here that means something like: “Don’t give up too easily, argue with them, reason with them, go out of your way to make them see the need, see the point!”

Something like those angels did who were sent out to get Lot out of the doomed city of Sodom.  They really URGED (that’s the word!!)… urged Lot to get out and get saved!  Why shall you die, Lot, why shall you perish?  God does not want the death of the sinner, so turn around and live!!  Before it is too late.

For yes, outside God’s lavish banquet there is death.  That gives the earnestness to the invitation.  There is nothing flippant about it!

Jesus the Open Way… but outside of Him there is No Way!!!

And there is the rub – so we come to point four:

These servants of the Lord, they also (4) suffer.

Yes, you would say that to be a herald of such joy, an inviter to such a feast, should make you welcome anywhere, wouldn’t you?

Also, that it is a desirable job to do such a thing.  Well, that it is!  Ask any minister, or elder.  Ask any glad child of God and that’s what they will still say – even after years of hard work.  I am still so glad I got this job, (and so is Ray Hoekzema or Dick de Wal).  And whoever has discovered the wonderful truth of the gospel will tell you he or she wouldn’t swap it for anything in the world!

But it isn’t easy.  Take Isaiah now: “Lord, send me.”

But God warned him: You’ll have a wonderful message.  And indeed of that joy and abundance of the Lord’s salvation his book is brim-full.  Yet the Lord said: “They won’t believe you, mate!”

Take Paul now!  He was a Jew who at last discovered his Messiah.  O, how he wanted to share his wonderful discovery.  How he wanted to make his fellow Israelites also partakers of the Feast of his Lord!  Wherever he came, Athens, Rome, Corinth, Antioch… he always went to the synagogue first, in order to invite his very fellow-countrymen… the covenant people of God!  But it was they – his very fellow Israelites – who made life hard for him, who had him stoned, who accused him and harassed him, and plotted against him!

And that is the lot of many a missionary after him.  That is the life of suffering of many a child of God who wants to extend God’s: invitation to an unwilling world.  Whoever hates God (and anyone whose heart the Spirit does not change does that!!) will squirm under the Word of God and will take out his anger and hatred against the God he cannot get at, on the messenger boy.

A Christian is called to a life of trembling joy, but it is not an easy life; it is not.  The devil has servants here too.  A child held under the water of baptism hears it already said about him that he is to carry his cross.  But whoever knows of God’s invitation will get the privilege and the power to carry that cross cheerfully.  That will show up the servants of the Great King.  They carry a cross after their master, yes, but that they carry it cheerfully!  Knowing Jesus is knowing the Bridegroom who will never leave them.

AMEN