Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.
“Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’
“But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.
“Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.
“But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless.
“Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
“For many are invited, but few are chosen.”
It's not difficult to see the in the basic story here the picture of Jesus. The Father first invited the Jews to celebrate His Son, their Messiah. They rejected their Messiah, and consequently, we (the Gentiles) were invited to the feast.
God's grace and compassion and mercy are overwhelming. We who did nothing to warrant an invitation have been invited. We receive all the benefits and love of the Father -all the attention that He would pour out on His people. We have, in a very real sense, become God's chosen people. We have been grafted into His family tree. He withholds nothing.
But there is something here that we often forget. Although God's compassion and mercy is overwhelming and His grace sufficient to meet every need, it is not given without expectation. God has expectations. He has requirements. This is a reality often overlooked in Evangelical circles. All have been invited and anyone may come, but we don't set the terms of the invitation. We come to God on His terms or we we can't come.
We come to the Father in brokenness and humility, accepting Jesus as His one and only provision for our rebellion and sin. We clothe ourselves in the righteousness of Christ. We turn our hearts from the agendas and desires of the flesh (this world's best thinking) and allow Him to transform us into the likeness and character of Christ. It is an all or nothing proposition. We must fully enter in, or we may not enter at all. The invitation has been given. But we must respond appropriately.
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