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Transcript

The Parable of the Great Banquet · The Grove Church

• 0:05
  Charlie Loften: The questions we wrestle with as Christians about who God is, how do we live out our faith, what is the Bible, what is the truth of the Bible, what are we supposed to believe? How are we supposed to live? There are really big, deep questions that we ask each other, that we ask God, that we wrestle with ourselves. And that's why the Cultivate podcast exists, to help us go deeper in our understanding of who God is, his word, and the way that he's called us to live. Hey, everyone.
• 0:36
  Welcome to the Cultivate Podcast with The Grove Church. I'm Charlie Lofton. I'm the lead pastor there. And we are here with
• 0:42
  Abigail Boone: Bagel Boone, associate pastor.
• 0:44
  Charlie Loften: Oh, oh, woah. Woah. I I thought for sure you were coming with Bagel Boone, the one
• 0:50
  Abigail Boone: The one who Charlie loves.
• 0:51
  Charlie Loften: Right? I thought that's what you were going with. Yes.
• 0:53
  Abigail Boone: That too.
• 0:53
  Charlie Loften: You've given yourself a title change.
• 0:55
  Abigail Boone: Yeah. I actually don't want it.
• 0:57
  Charlie Loften: Changing from creative director too. So this has extra responsibilities.
• 1:02
  Abigail Boone: I actually don't want any of those. Okay. But the title sounds nice.
• 1:06
  Charlie Loften: Oh, okay. Yeah. The title, but not the
• 1:08
  Abigail Boone: Sister Abbego. Sister?
• 1:12
  Charlie Loften: That makes a nun, though.
• 1:14
  Abigail Boone: Right? Really? Yeah. So I grew up in a church where even today, if I saw my pastor, I would say, hey, brother John.
• 1:22
  Charlie Loften: Right? But we call you Sister Sister Abigail?
• 1:25
  Abigail Boone: No, couldn't there just be like a woman pastor and that be Sister Bagel? Do you have to be a nun to be a sister? I don't know.
• 1:33
  Charlie Loften: I've not heard. You have to find out. I've not I don't know what churches that have women pastors, Well, what they
• 1:41
  Abigail Boone: John will be a good person because his sister's actually a pastor, so
• 1:44
  Charlie Loften: I can ask him. And it is literally his sister. Tell me about it.
• 1:47
  Abigail Boone: Ask Brother John.
• 1:48
  Charlie Loften: Ask Brother John. His sister Sue, sister Sue at That's great. That's great. Anyways, we are several weeks now into a series on parables. I
• 1:59
  Abigail Boone: was going say several months. That may not be accurate,
• 2:01
  Charlie Loften: but it's been a while. Months. Yes. A few months. Yes.
• 2:04
  And we're working our way through some that are just kind of a lot of them that are talking about the Kingdom and what the Kingdom of God is like, and we did workers in the cornfield last week, which is not to be confused with laborers in the vineyard, which is the actual name. Workers in the It's cornfield is the the puppets. It's the puppets.
• 2:22
  Abigail Boone: See that right there? My pinky really
• 2:25
  Charlie Loften: is struggling. You're getting better. You're You're getting better.
• 2:27
  Abigail Boone: I still can't go fast.
• 2:29
  Charlie Loften: Right. And now we are in the one called the Parable of the Great Banquet.
• 2:37
  Abigail Boone: Oh, okay.
• 2:38
  Charlie Loften: I think you'll be familiar with it when you hear it. It's not one of the most popular ones, but I think you'll be familiar with it. But I think it's important, This is one of those ones that really does have a really good context to it. Like there's a situation there's that kind of helps explain this. And so Jesus is at a Pharisee's house, and in verse seven Hello.
• 3:03
  Where are you? In Luke chapter 14
• 3:05
  Abigail Boone: Thank you.
• 3:06
  Charlie Loften: Luke chapter 14 verse seven. Do you like that? It was really nice. It was really nice. It good for the YouTube people.
• 3:15
  When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honor at the table, he told them this parable. And again, this is not the parable we're doing. Don't I don't know if this one count as a parable. It's such a it's it's such a short one. I maybe we'll do maybe we'll cover this one at some point.
• 3:30
  But when someone Basically, what he says here in this one, I won't read the whole thing, it's like, Hey, when you get to a party, sit at the worst seat, and then maybe the person will come in and be like, Hey, sit here at the best seat. You don't want to sit at the best seat, then the guy gets there like, What are you
• 3:45
  Abigail Boone: doing there? Go sit down here. Start humble.
• 3:49
  Charlie Loften: And then, yeah, verse 12, he says, Then Jesus said this to the host, when you invite, when you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, brothers, sisters, relatives, or rich neighbors. If you do, they will invite you back, and so you'll be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous. When one of those at the table with him heard this, he said to Jesus, Blessed is the one who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God.
• 4:20
  All right, so we're all just kind of He's at a dinner party with a Pharisee. He's talking to this Pharisee and all of his friends, so I'm sure there's multiple Pharisees there, people who are very faithful Jewish people, and it is all in the context of we're having a dinner party. And He's already kind of given one dinner party mini parable, Hey man, don't sit here, don't sit at the don't sit at the best spot, sit at the worst spot, you can get honored up. And so he's really just kind of talking to them a lot about where do you get honor, what does honor look like, and you guys kind of, you invite your friends and want to sit in the best seats, and you've got kind of this messed up view about what honor looks Right? Yeah.
• 5:08
  So, and this person, Man, it's going be great to eat at the feast of the kingdom of God, Verse 16, now we've got our parable for today.
• 5:16
  Abigail Boone: That a normal statement to say?
• 5:19
  Charlie Loften: What do you mean by normal?
• 5:20
  Abigail Boone: Mean, I've Like, in never that said day and age, would it be normal to be
• 5:25
  Charlie Loften: like, Blessed. It's hard for me to look at that and not think of it in any other terms than some sort of what we would call now this kind of a weird Jesus juke.
• 5:37
  Abigail Boone: Okay.
• 5:38
  Charlie Loften: Like, we're just kind of like, hey, we're Jesus kind of talks, like, Blessed oh, it's going to be great to be in the kingdom of like, Bro, what even do mean by that? Like, you're just, I think it would have, you know, because Jesus, He high five Him.
• 5:55
  Abigail Boone: I feel like everybody around Him will be like, Try hard.
• 5:59
  Charlie Loften: But again, think I'm reading into that. I think I'm personally reading into Okay. Because if you were to say something like that, you were all a sudden, we were just sitting here and it's like, Brother, I'm going be blessed to be with you in heaven someday, I'd be like, Bagels? Are you okay? But it probably would have been more normal for them to talk like that, especially having a rabbi there.
• 6:21
  But my guess is try hard in there. Okay. I can't help even if I try to scrape away all my bias. Yeah. It feels a little try hard.
• 6:36
  Okay. Okay. Verse 16, Jesus replied, a certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests. At the time of the banquet, he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, come, for everything is now ready. But they all alike began to make excuses.
• 6:53
  The first said, I have just bought a field, and I must go and see it. Please excuse me. Another said, I've just bought five yoke of oxen, and I'm on my way to try them out. Please excuse me. Still another said, I just got married, so I can't come.
• 7:08
  The servant came back and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and ordered his servant, go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame. Sir, the servant said, what you ordered has been done, but there is still room. Then the master told his servant, go out to the roads and country lanes and compel them to come in so that my house will be full. I tell you, not one of those who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.
• 7:38
  And so I think if there is an indication here of that guy's statement being a little bit maybe insincere and tryhard, is Jesus' answer to a statement is not a kind one. Okay. He's not like, Yeah, talking because to a group of people that should have, that be identifying themselves proper people to have been invited who ultimately declined the invitation. They would not be identifying themselves with the poor in the lane or the people who were out middle in of nowhere and were compelled to come in. They would have rightly thought of themselves in this parable as those And the ones who had been so, invited person says, It's going to be great to feast together in the kingdom of God.
• 8:32
  And he goes, it's a little bit like this. The kingdom of God's a little bit like this. Somebody like you talks a good game and gets invited, but then when it matters, they don't show up. Thanks, brother. Right?
• 8:50
  I mean, so, all right, so again, I guess I've already spoiled it a little bit. Mean, as always, the master, the king, we're always talking about God, the kingdom is like this. So you got this, the kingdom is like this where a man has this great banquet and he's invited all of these people. And so, with it saying that this is what the kingdom of God is like, it's like, Okay, this is the kingdom. The kingdom is like this king.
• 9:18
  He set up this banquet inviting you to be a part of the kingdom of God. He's an inviter, and all of these people have been invited, but don't show up.
• 9:29
  Abigail Boone: See, this kind of takes me back to our very first parable of the sower Mhmm. That they'd be like, who on earth would throw a banquet and invite these people? Like, the banquet thrower would be confusing to them.
• 9:45
  Charlie Loften: Which part would be confusing?
• 9:48
  Abigail Boone: That he'd be like, yeah, invite the cripple, go and invite the people from the country and all that stuff. They'd be like, There's no one that throws a banquet and would be willing to keep inviting.
• 9:59
  Charlie Loften: Yeah, so what would a person do? Like, if I invite all these people to come to the banquet and Yeah. None of them cancel
• 10:09
  Abigail Boone: You don't want to lose cool points.
• 10:12
  Charlie Loften: Right. This is very inverting of the Yeah.
• 10:18
  Abigail Boone: Like, they would have been like, There's no one that throws bank
• 10:20
  Charlie Loften: things There's no one, you would be embarrassed just not show it. So, again, in that sense, it's kind of like there's a real shocking component to
• 10:37
  Abigail Boone: it. Because in the sower, No one throws their seat back.
• 10:39
  Charlie Loften: Yeah, no one would do that. And no one would do this. I mean, like, you would think of there's people who are worthy of being in the banquet and people who are unworthy. And the people who fancy themselves as worthy ultimately came up with excuses to not be a part of it. And so then he did the unthinkable, which is to invite Continue inviting.
• 11:04
  To invite the unworthy, which then now the other flip flop of it is, okay, well now who's worthy? Yeah. The worthy one, quote unquote, is the one who accepts the invitation, not the one who on the front end thought that they deserved it. Yeah. That really, I think there is a sense in which, very much like the parable of the sower, where there is a broad invitation that is being made.
• 11:35
  Really, how does he exactly say it? Where'd he go? Go out to the roads and country lanes compel them to come in that my house will be full. Again, just like what we talked about last week, a very generous person. The point is I want to be able to be generous with a large group of people.
• 12:09
  Not so much like, I need you to be impressed with his main how goal great
• 12:14
  Abigail Boone: is to have a full house, not to have a certain type of person.
• 12:18
  Charlie Loften: Right, and that would reflect well on him. Like, Oh, look, all the finest people came to my banquet. He just wants to be generous and throw a really fun party. And then all of these people who were part of the initial invites turned him down. Yeah.
• 12:37
  Which is real lame. Well, again, I think now again, post resurrection Pauline evangelical Christian theology that we have right now, we definitely see more into this than maybe what they would have, and we can get to that. But let's just kind of stick for right now, kind of where they are. So they would have definitely viewed themselves as the people who were invited but turned Him down. Yeah.
• 13:10
  So the kingdom of God came, and the people who should most have been expecting it to come, when it finally came time for it to come, they had all sorts of excuses as to why they couldn't come.
• 13:28
  Abigail Boone: Which that's why I feel like these excuses are lame. It's like someone saying, I just bought a new car and I want to go try it out.
• 13:35
  Charlie Loften: Yeah, they're both lame. They're equal parts lame, but not evil.
• 13:40
  Abigail Boone: Right. They're just like, I'm busy.
• 13:43
  Charlie Loften: I've got other things going on. I have other priorities right now in my life other than feasting with you at your banquet.
• 13:52
  Abigail Boone: Yeah. Like, if someone told me they couldn't come to my barbecue because they just got married, I'd be like,
• 13:57
  Charlie Loften: Bring her?
• 13:58
  Abigail Boone: Yeah. Like, what do you mean? She's invited? Yeah. Like, now's the time to establish community, not silo.
• 14:09
  Charlie Loften: Don't you get somebody watch those ox for just a hot minute?
• 14:12
  Abigail Boone: Just a night. I mean, you don't
• 14:15
  Charlie Loften: have to be with these ox 20 fourseven. You're going to sleep at some point. Just pin them up, bro.
• 14:21
  Abigail Boone: Pin them up. It's just like Whatever you're trying
• 14:23
  Charlie Loften: to do with them tonight Yeah. You can do tomorrow.
• 14:28
  Abigail Boone: It's not I'm offering a banquet. Right.
• 14:31
  Charlie Loften: This is a really, again. This is a once in a lifetime kind of opportunity. So what would so the so the Pharisees and the people like that are hearing this and saying clear it wasn't this is not so subtle that they'd be like I wonder which one he thinks I am. Right? They would have caught it.
• 14:52
  They may not agree with him, but like, so what are the parallel excuses? So Jesus has come, is inviting them into the kingdom. They theoretically have been invited for a long time. They know that God is bringing the kingdom. They know they are followers of God.
• 15:09
  They would feel themselves invited. And then Jesus comes.
• 15:15
  Abigail Boone: It's almost like they're not catching the importance of who's in front of them.
• 15:19
  Charlie Loften: Yeah. But it's like
• 15:22
  Abigail Boone: Like, the position that they're at, they should be able to identify like, oh, this is an important banquet to be at, but they're not identifying that.
• 15:31
  Charlie Loften: Yeah, it's almost like what would make most sense is the banquet guy, he sends his servant to go invite them, and they didn't know who that servant was. That would make the most sense as far as the way that we think about it. Hey, I want you to invite you to the banquet, they're like, Who's this guy? That they did not associate the servant with the banquet. Because, again, if someone of great honor was putting together a banquet, they would have wanted to be there.
• 16:16
  At some point, they got distracted. At some point, they either devalued the person that was making the offer, or they didn't recognize the offer when it came. Because none of those excuses really make sense and something that they really wanted to go to, they would have made the time for it. And so it would be some combination of, I just got distracted, my values changed, or I didn't really Oh, you're His servant. I only missed it.
• 16:56
  That's stupid, stupid, stupid. Yeah, yeah. And so, again, like we were talking about last week, I mean, these guys would not have been hanging out by the campfire thinking about it. Like Jesus and His disciples would have left, and these guys would have been still kind of sitting around going,
• 17:12
  Abigail Boone: you think He's talking about it.
• 17:14
  Charlie Loften: Do think He meant by that? Yeah. Because when God offers the kingdom
• 17:20
  Abigail Boone: Mhmm. We'll be there.
• 17:21
  Charlie Loften: I'm gonna first in line. Mhmm. Like, I wonder if at some point they were like, Wait. Is Jesus saying He's the servant? What I was just about to
• 17:35
  Abigail Boone: say is there's other parables that we've talked about where they are kind of, I don't know, they're insulted or it's an offense of how Jesus is making almost like a divinity claim. Right. Does that fall in line here at all, that they'd be like, Is He saying He's the great banquet?
• 17:59
  Charlie Loften: I would say on the back end, where we are, we look at that and we should identify Jesus in some way as the servant who is inviting them to the banquet. So God the Father has been setting up this idea, I'm going to bring the kingdom to you. And the kingdom is going to be like this great feast and you're all invited. That they would have all been like, Yeah! And then he looks at Jesus and says, Now go down there and tell them the kingdom is here, and they've got all sorts of excuses why they can't come.
• 18:38
  And so, I think we can say for sure, with 99% certainty, that we should identify Jesus as the servant of the banquet holder. I wonder how soon they would have caught that. At the point that they did, they would have dismissed it. This guy again
• 19:07
  Abigail Boone: Was this another one of those situations, like, a couple weeks ago, we were talking about him being invited to a Pharisee's house, and it seemed kinda like a test. Was he, like, invited on those pretenses again? I know he was at a Pharisee's, or he was invited to a a prominent Pharisee.
• 19:27
  Charlie Loften: Verse one, One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully Okay.
• 19:35
  Abigail Boone: So he was on trial.
• 19:37
  Charlie Loften: Yeah. Okay. And, you know, so there in front of him was a man suffering from abnormal swelling of his body. Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in the law, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not? They remained silent.
• 19:50
  So taking hold of the man, he healed him and sent him on his way. Yeah, so this was not a, We should have Jesus over him. Yeah. Party. Yeah.
• 20:00
  There was still some, was a heavy amount of suspicion on And so then Jesus kind of brought it all to the forefront by healing somebody on the Sabbath, which would have been like, Ah, that's not good. You're working, you're not supposed to be doing stuff like that on the Sabbath. And then He starts observing them, and He notes how everybody's trying to fight over the best spot at the table. So now he's kind of turning the tables on them, and then try hard comes out of nowhere with either a part try hard, part test of like, trying to regain the upper hand here a little bit.
• 20:41
  Abigail Boone: Oh, how the turntables.
• 20:44
  Charlie Loften: So we're back to back now. SpongeBob reference last week, Office this week.
• 20:49
  Abigail Boone: We'll keep it going.
• 20:50
  Charlie Loften: Make a note for Parks and Rec for next week. Okay. Figure out a way to drop Parks and Rec in there. Anyways, maybe Marvel, Star Wars. We've got lots of choices.
• 20:58
  Abigail Boone: Should you do, like, a pick up your mat and walk to the get on your feet?
• 21:04
  Charlie Loften: We didn't have enough money, but this sure is dope. Yeah, and so Jesus is turning it on them again. I think they're trying to reclaim some of the upper hand here, and it's like, it's going to be great when we get to dine with the Father and the Kingdom. Was like, let
• 21:26
  Abigail Boone: me tell you
• 21:26
  Charlie Loften: what the Kingdom The is Kingdom is like God sets up this awesome banquet, and the people who were supposed to show up made lame excuses as to why they couldn't because they didn't really recognize it when it happened. And in fact, the only people that are really going to make it, like that dude that I just healed, that you think is sinful and that's why he's broken and he wasn't even worthy of being healed on the Sabbath, even though you'd get your ox out of a you you'd pick your ox up out, if fell down in a ditch, you'd pick him up, you think that's okay, but I can't heal this guy. Yeah. You have such backward priorities about what is important and what is good and what is great, what makes someone worthy. And you're so worthy and so great and so connected to God and all these things, you could not even recognize the invitation of God into the kingdom when it came to you.
• 22:22
  And so, because God is in fact a generous God, He's not going to be stood up by the
• 22:28
  Abigail Boone: likes of you. And just call it quits.
• 22:30
  Charlie Loften: He is going to fill this place with the people that you think are the worst because you failed to recognize who God was in the first place.
• 22:41
  Abigail Boone: Well, it's interesting though, in that context that it's and maybe he's just casting the net wide of how many people will not recognize the servant that it wasn't just the next layer of people that came he had to go even further out and like keep searching out of who would be willing to recognize the invitation.
• 23:00
  Charlie Loften: I'm going to go as far as I can to invite as many people as possible so that this place will be full. And so, it shows a very generous God, spiritually, He wants everyone to be a part of this. We'll invite everyone and try to get as many people to fill up the house as possible. But before we get to some unfettered universalism, it does say, and the people that weren't invited will not get to taste one So little bit of there is exclusion to it. There are people that are rejecting the invitation.
• 23:37
  But there's open invite. But the invitation is incredibly open. The invite is open to everyone, but there will be people who reject the invitation, and by and large, it will be the people who think of themselves as being the most worthy of it. Which has a very historical time stamped application at that time, Jews, Gentiles, know, Pharisees versus lowly Jews, right? Mean, there was a timestamp part, but it's still working.
• 24:15
  Yeah. You know? We talked about last week, we should all view ourselves as eleventh hour people. And again, I think we should all view ourselves as the people he went way out of his way to go invite because, again, we're two thousand years, other side of the world, Gentiles, with nothing culturally in common with first century Judaism. You know, so we are that in one sense, but I think there's also a sense in which you got to be really careful of not slipping into.
• 24:52
  Abigail Boone: Assuming you'll see
• 24:53
  Charlie Loften: it. Hey, I'm worthy. I'm worthy, I'm good, and I'll definitely recognize invitations that God makes for me to participate in something because of how great I am. Because I think we have lowercase k kingdom invites all the time that we miss. Because, you know, I just got a new car.
• 25:23
  I'm going on vacation.
• 25:25
  Abigail Boone: I just got to
• 25:26
  Charlie Loften: ask someone a date. Yeah. Mean, Good Samaritan is the same sort of thing. The most religious people missed a small K kingdom invitation to help someone who'd been bloodied and left on the side of the road because they had more important things to do.
• 25:45
  Abigail Boone: Well, I think it is very key what you pointed out earlier, that it's not necessarily bad things. Right. And kind of raising the alarm bell of like, it's not just you being stuck in sin, it could just be, which I sense wrong word. You don't have to be inadvertently bad things to think you might miss it. Right.
• 26:08
  You could just be busy with good things.
• 26:10
  Charlie Loften: Yep.
• 26:11
  Abigail Boone: To miss it all. Which is, it's interesting. I think at the very beginning of the series, you kind of establish the like framework of looking at Jesus's Ministry as kind of like a transitional like preparing them for what we keep referencing as post resurrection theology and stuff And like I'm in a class right now that's looking at all New Testament letters, and, like, so much of it is about disunity because these Jews and Gentiles just don't know how to be together.
• 26:44
  Charlie Loften: Right.
• 26:44
  Abigail Boone: But that's what he's talking about right there. Like he's trying to prepare them of like, no, you don't get it. Like both, all of you. It is generous and open and more inclusive than you think, but then you see all the New Testament letters and they're still battling it.
• 27:00
  Charlie Loften: Yeah. Would anybody who heard Jesus talk about this think that God was generous and kind and gracious to broken, lame, and poor people? And the answer to that is no, because you are broken, lame, and poor because of something you did. It is anything bad that happens to you is definitely a judgment upon you. And the fact that I am wealthy and healthy means that God favors me, and God does not favor you.
• 27:40
  And it turns out God heavily favors them, and it's not that He doesn't favor you. You just didn't notice when He called.
• 27:48
  Abigail Boone: Yeah. Well, and it's also even in their social, like, it's one thing in our culture to be like, it's kind of weird that I'm around this totally lower demographic that's in a different socioeconomic, like, wouldn't even touch each other Mhmm. Or like, be in the same room as each other. So, him to like, give the implication that like, you could receive this invite, but you'd be in the same room as the lame and the crippled. Mhmm.
• 28:12
  And like, that would have been so socially uncomfortable for them. Like, they would never ride the Metro in New York. That'd be so uncomfortable. Like, he's shattering a lot of like social barriers of giving them like, no, the kingdom is really like this larger invitation that you can't even comprehend. Yeah,
• 28:33
  Charlie Loften: mean, to me, see, that part is kind of the adding insult to injury, It's people that I think are the worst are the ones that are getting into the kingdom, But the, you know, adding insult to the is God made an invite to invite you into His kingdom.
• 28:52
  Abigail Boone: Mhmm. And
• 28:53
  Charlie Loften: you And you told Him you were busy with day to day Meaning to ask. Yeah. And again, I there has to be imagining a reflective Pharisee, a Nicodemus, a Joseph of Arimathea, someone like that who comes from this kind of upper class, religiously powerful person in the Jewish world who is hearing Jesus say this and like, what is it that I have been distracted by? Why was I not able to see it? Is he talking about my religious devotion?
• 29:40
  That's definitely what he was talking about in the Good Samaritan. You were so busy trying to hold up the you can't touch blood laws that you missed an opportunity to love and to care for somebody. Oh, wait a minute. These because all of those, actually, they're all kind of tied to prosperity. I was so swept up in my prosperity.
• 30:09
  Yeah. I missed the invitation to the kingdom. So then in the contrast with the poor and the lame and the weak and the people who live way out there makes even more sense. Because it's not that I got distracted by religious devotion, Good Samaritan, I'm being distracted by my own prosperity.
• 30:26
  Abigail Boone: I've got Just excess and
• 30:29
  Charlie Loften: I'm busy with all my stuff, actually, oxen, and all these things. So, I can't. Can't. I'm busy being awesome.
• 30:45
  Abigail Boone: Yeah. Which one thing we haven't touched on was the banquet holder. I don't know what else they called him, that he gets angry the last time the servant comes back and says they haven't there's no one the owner of the house became angry and ordered his servant go out quickly. That, like, what do you think that speaks to of God's character of the servant? We're assuming Jesus is the servant.
• 31:13
  God being angry of, like, I've invited so many people, and they're still saying not recognizing.
• 31:20
  Charlie Loften: I think that is a question that I think would just be like, okay, when did the father get mad at Jesus? Know? Oh, he's angry at
• 31:29
  Abigail Boone: the servant?
• 31:29
  Charlie Loften: No, I'm just saying, like, thought that's maybe what you were.
• 31:32
  Abigail Boone: No, no, no. Like, I think I was imagining he's angry with the people not recognizing what a great party he's inviting them to.
• 31:42
  Charlie Loften: Yeah, I mean, he's like, I cannot believe And that I am offering life to them
• 31:48
  Abigail Boone: they're not accepting.
• 31:49
  Charlie Loften: And they're not accepting it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it matters to him. It is a deep emotional thing for him to be able to share his love with people.
• 32:03
  And the fact that people are rejecting that for trivial matters is deeply upsetting to him.
• 32:11
  Abigail Boone: Because I would imagine that would be the part that the normal party host would just cancel. Right. But he was frustrated and wanted to still give Jim's
• 32:21
  Charlie Loften: I've a decent number here now. It's good. It's good No. I'm going to keep going because I want this place to be full. Mhmm.
• 32:32
  And when people talk about this this name, we're getting off the rails here a little bit, but just even even the fact that we've gone so long, Jesus said he was gonna come back soon.
• 32:43
  Abigail Boone: Yeah.
• 32:45
  Charlie Loften: And like, we left soon in the rearview mirror a long time ago. Uh-huh. But there's there's a lot of that still in it where it's like, I mean, I'm I'm still looking to fill this place up. And so I want to go to the far ends of the earth and make sure everybody everywhere, no matter how far geographically or spiritually or personally they may be from the hubs of the kingdom, I wanna fill up this place. And so he is both going to physical distances, but then now temporal, great distances to make sure that everybody is getting an invite.
• 33:31
  And again, it just points to the generosity of God, but again, no universalism. Is not a universal because God's inviting everybody, not everybody accepts. There is a universal call, but not a universal accept.
• 33:49
  Abigail Boone: The universalness is dependent on the inviter.
• 33:52
  Charlie Loften: Right, but the call is universal. And Jesus will even, God will even go out of His way to make sure everybody is invited. But the acceptance is always important to me because every now and then No,
• 34:05
  Abigail Boone: that is important.
• 34:06
  Charlie Loften: Because every now and then there's some things that say that people like to twist into some sort of universalism. I'm not
• 34:11
  Abigail Boone: sure if someone could make a crazy clip of us and put it out there and say something crazy.
• 34:17
  Charlie Loften: Yeah, but not universally. You're not going to accidentally catch me saying something universally. Anyways, Bagel, thank you so much. Of course. There's always great insight and thinking.
• 34:27
  You talking and asking questions, you helped me think better.
• 34:33
  Abigail Boone: That is
• 34:33
  Charlie Loften: a I'm so excited. Enjoyed this. I
• 34:35
  Abigail Boone: enjoyed Thank you.
• 34:36
  Charlie Loften: And thank you guys for joining us as well. Encourage you to keep coming back as we're working our way through the parables. And we would love to connect with you on a Sunday if we're not already. You can find us at thegrovechurch.org, and you find out information on our streaming services, being in person, and there's a form you can fill out to let us know any help that you need, any questions you have, we would love to hear from you. So again, thank you for joining us, and we'll see you next time.
• 35:05
  Thank you for listening to the Cultivate Podcast. Our hope is that you are taking steps to go deeper in your faith, that you are asking big questions, and you're looking for answers. We hope that we can be a resource for you through our podcast and any other way that we can help you. You can find all our episodes anywhere that you can find podcasts, YouTube. And again, thank you so much for joining us.