But such applications fail to understand the function of this strong injunction to the servant. He is not being sent out with ropes, chains and machine guns to drag reluctant strangers back to his master's house! That isn't what the master means when he says, 'Compel them to come in.' The master's command is born of his recognition that the people he's sending the servant to reach out to will be utterly surprised when they receive the invitation. Their immediate reaction will be that the servant has got it wrong; the banquet can't be for them. They will feel that they are far too poor to be invited to a great house like that of the servant's master. They will feel that as Gentiles or strangers, they can't be intended as guests. The invitation must have been delivered to the wrong house. Hence the master says, 'Make them come in.' He means, grab them by the arm, persuade them, convince them, cajole them even. The servant is to use all the means at his disposal to assure them that the host's invitation really does include them. And that's why we can be so confident that God's invitation includes us, whoever we are. It is not qualified or limited by 'ifs' and huts'. No matter how unworthy we may feel, no matter how 'unchristian' and alien, the invitation is for all. You are invited. God wants you in his kingdom. He urges you to come along; the party is ready for you now. Why delay?
No doubt we have our plans for the coming months and years. Perhaps a student is studying for a degree. What is he going to do then? Perhaps another has found someone she wants to marry. What about when the wedding is over? Maybe they have ideas about a career. Maybe they are planning to have a family. But the career will end and the children will grow up. What then?
The truth is that however much you can cram into these fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty years that God has given you, it only ends in one place. The estate or the five yoke of oxen we've just bought, even the wife we've just married, seems so very important to us. And of course,
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