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[ Music ] He gave to us the moon and sun, the twinkling stars above. But better for he gave his son the matchless gift of love. I thank you God for everything,

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Thy wondrous gifts to me. So from the heart of love I sing ♪ This song of praise to thee ♪ ♪ This song of praise to thee ♪

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- Amen. Let's all say amen again. We want to thank Sister Doris Wilhite Doris Wilhite for that message in song.

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Our scripture lesson is found in two passages of scripture that have been read earlier, which I shall read again. Luke the 14th chapter, the 50 through the 24th verses, and Matthew the 22nd chapter, 11 through the 14th verses I shall read using the Living Bible paraphrase.

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Hearing this a man sitting at the table with Jesus exclaimed, "What a privilege it would be to get into the kingdom of God." Jesus replied with this illustration, A man prepared a great feast and sent out many invitations. When all was ready, he sent his servant around to notify the guests that it was time for

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them to arrive. But they all began making excuses. One said he had just bought a field and wanted to inspect it and asked to be excused. Another said he had just bought five pair of oxen and wanted to try them out.

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Another had just been married and for that reason he couldn't come. The servant returned and reported to his master what they had said. His master was angry and told him to go quickly into the streets and alleys of the city and to invite the beggars crippled, lame, and blind.

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But even then there was still room. "Well," then said his master, "go out into the country lanes and out behind the hedges and urge anyone you find to come so that the house will be filled. For none of those I invited first will get even the smallest taste of what I had prepared

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for them. Then the ending which is taken from Matthew, when the king came in to meet the guests, He noticed a man who wasn't wearing the wedding robe provided for him. "Friend," he asked, "how does it happen that you are here without a wedding robe?"

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And the man had no reply. the king said to his aides, bind him hand and foot and throw him out into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called but few are chosen. The subject of the message, the great banquet, the great

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banquet. Life is a banquet. It's a celebration. It is not meant to be a famine but a feast where everything for the heart's content is provided in abundance. Life is not a problem to be solved, it's a banquet to be enjoyed. Therefore we should rejoice and be exceedingly glad because life is a

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a banquet. According to the divine design, every person is to celebrate his or her life. The creature's existence in this world is to be an anthem of praise honoring the creator. Jesus tells this story to illustrate the fact that life is a banquet. God is the host who invites us to be his guests.

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God makes the offer. He extends the invitation. He takes the initiative. He acts first on our behalf.

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The rule of God in the world is like a man who gives a great banquet. It's not a small reception hidden away in some remote corner. It is a banquet, the magnitude of which can neither be equaled or excelled. It's a great banquet.

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We ought not take ourselves lightly. Each of us has significance. Life is a great banquet, a tremendous celebration. The necessary arrangements are made to give significance to every person's existence.

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God has already acted. He has moved toward us. We see God's action for us in the Garden of Eden, placed prepared before Adam and Eve are placed in it.

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They are there to celebrate life. They're given the privilege of eating freely of all the trees in the garden, save one. They are to celebrate life by being fruitful and replenishing the earth. They are to celebrate life by honoring the commands of the gardener.

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Yes, life is a banquet prepared for everybody. God wills that all people be happy, that we seek to realize self-fulfillment. God alone can prepare this banquet. Our human achievements are not sufficient for us to make of life a banquet.

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It's transitory. All flesh is grass. God must prepare the banquet. Human wisdom is foolishness.

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God prepares the banquet. We cannot give purpose, aim, and significance to life. God must do that. We really don't know why we're here.

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And we have to ask God about that. We really don't know what we are to do and how we can best use ourselves and fulfill whatever design there is for us. We have to consult God for that.

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So you see God prepares for the great banquet where there is neither suffering nor death. It's the messianic banquet, the celebration of life in the new age, the marvelous manifestation of the new humanity. This is good news that God the Father prepares for the human family a great banquet.

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You see Jesus tells this story while at the table. He compares breaking bread together here with the experience of the kingdom of God. Those at the table are together in communion.

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Life is a banquet, the experience of communion with God. God not only prepares the meal we consume, We gather around him in communion with him. Life is a banquet in which we share his love.

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Life is a banquet in which we acknowledge that we share his bounty. It's a banquet in which we find fulfillment in his will. God invites us to share fellowship with him

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and with one another. He invites us all to a large common table. Not each one of us to his own separate table, his own personal happiness.

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God prepares a great banquet for us all. He himself is the menu. Delight thyself also in the Lord. The menu indicates that he is the bread for he says, "I am the bread of life."

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We drink of his cup. He is the meat for it is our meat to do the Father's will. We are invited to sit at his table for you see life is a banquet prepared by the creator for his creatures.

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So you see the Lord, having prepared the banquet, sends forth his messengers to invite the privileged to the feast. His messengers are the prophets, apostles, evangelists,

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teachers who extend the invitation saying, "Come to the feast. "All things are ready." The privileged ones are those who have received

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the biblical revelation. those who have been reared in a godly tradition, those who live in expectation of the coming of the Lord. Now, you see, normally we would think

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that those would be the first to welcome the invitation and make haste to come to the banquet. But such is not the case. We notice in this story,

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Instead, they make excuses. One says, you know, I've just bought a piece of property, and I've got to go and inspect it. Another says, well, you see, I have just bought five oxen,

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and I've got to go try them out. I beg to be excused. The first two beg to be excused. Another says, you know, I've just got married

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and I've got to be with my wife. He doesn't even ask to be excused. I've got to be with my wife. And so they refuse the invitation.

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They don't say that the invitation isn't from God from God, they just make excuses. They have more important things to do than to pay heed to the call of God. You know, business takes up all their time.

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You know, Reverend, I just have so much business. I don't really have time to be bothered with the claims of God and the work of the church. business makes such great demands upon me. You really just don't understand." And someone else says, "Well, you see, it's my work." We look at the work of the farmers, the employees,

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the social workers, the doctors, the lawyers, all somehow they are those who get so wrapped up in their work that they make excuses that they don't really have time for the claims of God. In others, you know, look at the family.

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Well, I have a wife and I have children. You see, they are young and we want to live, first of all. We want to experience and explore as well as enjoy the great adventure of love between man and woman.

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So we don't have time. The invitation is extended and those who receive it refuse to accept it in the first group. They wait until time to attend the banquet and then they begin to make excuses. It's pushed aside.

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There's no place for the invitation on that crowded agenda. Now you see the concerns of the businessman, the concerns of the worker, the concerns of the family, they're all important. God has never minimized the place of work in life.

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He's never minimized the family. In fact, he ordained the family. So God does not intend for these to be ignored. It is the matter of the proper arrangement of our priorities.

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Jesus says, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all of these things will be added to you." other things will somehow be arranged in their proper order if we put God first in our lives. And so there's a harsh judgment against those who make excuses for themselves.

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Invited to the banquet but I beg to be excused. They are excluded from eternal life not because they did some particularly evil thing but because they brought forth excuses. They had more important things to attend to. And so this is what the Bible says about sin. You know, people who feel that they

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have more important things to do than to give concern to the claims of God. And so with our bourgeois honesty and with our trustworthy character, with our reputation as good citizens beyond reproach, somehow we find ourselves cut off from hope. We find ourselves cast out by God because we have made excuses. Excuses. So the

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householder is angry. Angry. Ladies, you know how it is when you have prepared a a meal and you have it all ready and you expect the person to be there while it's hot and you have it all ready and they don't come for an hour or so later, you're quite disturbed. The householder is angry.

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He's angry because first of all he has prepared and they have indicated by their actions that they were going to accept the invitation and when the time really comes for them to gather around the table, they start making excuses. So he says to his servants, "You go to the streets of the city.

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Go to the main avenues. Go where across the crowded ways of life. Go there and invite people to come." And so this is done, but there is still room.

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And then he says go to the highways and the hedges, go out where you may reach people who are coming and going and relate to those who are far and near. Go to the highways and invite them to come. Not only that, he says go to the hedges, go to those places where people are hidden.

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Invite them to come. And this is done. He said I want my place filled. God wants this place filled.

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We are so content with empty pews. And all of these empty pews are due to people who have excuses. Excuses. Excuses.

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I beg to be excused. I'm so busy. The claims of my business. Excuses.

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The claims of my work. I've got to rest one day. Excuses. So we have all of these empty pews in every service when if our people who could come

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would come, we wouldn't have enough room to seat them. It would be filled. Excuses. Well God invites and God waits for us to come to the banquet he has prepared.

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Let's consider the strange ending of this banquet. all there. It's the great banquet. Food is there, everything to make life happy, everything for them to delight in, music, the harmony of life, all things are there, everything is ready. God himself has prepared it. And then as as they gather

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in the banquet, God walks among his guests to have fellowship. He looks from person to person. No matter how many we are, somehow God has the time to give each one of us individual attention. We are precious in his sight. And he walks as he comes about from place to place in the banquet hall, he comes upon one man who doesn't have on a wedding

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garment, a wedding garment. You see let's take a moment to look at the significance of a wedding garment. Whenever you came to a feast according to Oriental custom, when you came to the feast at the door there was a wedding garment and you would have put on the wedding garment, a festive robe in order to participate in the feast. You would have

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Get rid of your old dirty clothes and pull them off and put on that festive robe, that wedding garment in order to come into the feast. So here's a man without that robe. He said, "Friend, how did you get in here?

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How did you get in here?" And the King James Version said he was speechless. Had no excuse. The garment's already prepared.

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All he had to do was just put it on. But this rascal is too lazy to put it on. How did you get in here? I remember back in 1936 when we were observing the State Fair of Texas and I happened to

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live behind the State Fair, not too far from the State Fair, behind it there. A group of us young fellas decided to slip into the state fair. We climbed over the fence and after we got in, we didn't have any money. We just wanted to see what was happening.

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After we got in, we hadn't gotten very far from where we climbed in. We met the policeman and he said, "What are you boys doing in here?" I was speechless. Whenever you've done wrong and you know you've done wrong, you don't really have an excuse

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when you meet the judge standing before God with speechless, speechless, speechless. He has a robe prepared, everything is necessary in order to get into the banquet and he refuses to wear it. And you see this robe is the righteousness of Christ. We can't get into the banquet of life without putting

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on the garments, the royal robe of righteousness which Jesus Christ provides. That's the way we get in! We can't really enjoy life until somehow we put on the royal robe of righteousness that Christ provides.

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It's a robe of meekness. It's a robe of hunger and thirst after righteousness. It's a robe of the pure in heart. It's a robe of love, the royal robe of righteousness.

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It's a robe that somehow even when those who wrong you, persecute you and speak all manner of evil against you falsely that you're able to rejoice and be exceedingly glad because you have owned the royal robe. How did you get in here without that robe?

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He was speechless. And he says to the servants, "Bind him hand and foot and cast him out into the outer darkness there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Well it's a banquet, it's a banquet that we can enjoy if we take off our dirty

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clothes. You see because all of our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. It's when we put on the righteousness of Jesus Christ and come in to God's banquet hall, that life takes on significance. It has meaning. It has purpose. There is joy in the midst of trial when we put on the wedding garment. And so he speaks to us today saying, "Get

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rid of the excuses. Whatever there may be that has caused us not to really move into the banquet hall of God as we ought to, the kind of excuses we make about these human concerns, he's saying get rid of them, get rid of them and come in to my banquet hall. If you really want joy, joy, joy, come into my banquet hall. Put on

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on the royal robe of righteousness that Jesus Christ provides by his life and come in. Now those of us who can testify that I've come in, some of us came in at different periods of our lives. I came in when I was nine.

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You may have come in at a different period. I came in on a Sunday morning. others may have come in on a Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday but you came in to the banquet hall and somehow the Father has provided everything that we need in

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the midst of our distress even in the midst of our grief somehow he has given us comfort. It's a banquet and he's determined that all who come into this banquet shall enjoy their lives because they have communion with him and when When you commune with the Father, when you commune with the eternal goodness, that's

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enough. Life becomes a banquet and we enter into the halls of highest human happiness with God. As we sing now the hymn of invitation, we invite you to come. Come into the banquet hall.

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Come into the hall of salvation, the hall of joy, of meaningfulness. Guide me, O thou great Jehovah. [music] ♪ The world, our country, our home ♪

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♪ Now we stand as one ♪ ♪ Our dream, our hope, our liberty ♪ ♪ Our faith, our love, our pride ♪ ♪ Gladdened, we become one ♪

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♪ Oh, we are ♪ ♪ Gladdened, we become one ♪ [MUSIC] [Music]

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[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

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[Music] [Music] [Music] ♪ And the sky above me ♪

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♪ Will be filled with your song ♪ ♪ So the praises of heaven ♪ ♪ From the praises ♪ ♪ Of heaven ♪

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[Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]