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The King said of His Son’s wedding banquet: “Everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast.”

᛭ INI ᛭

The Lord makes a banquet. The heavenly Father makes the banquet for the Son. The heavenly King wants co-regent, His crown prince, to have a wedding feast. The Son does all things prep His Bride, the Church. He makes her holy and without blemish. He gives Himself up for her. He washes her, nourishes her, cares for her. She is His body, and He her head. And we are members of His body. The Spirit is the voice: crying out, calling out through the preachers: “Come to the feast!”

Why don’t some come? You can see why. They don’t care. They don’t actually care about the banquet. They don’t care about the crown prince. They don’t care about the King. You can tell they don’t care about these things. You can tell by what they do care about: their farm, their job. They’ve got things going on, and so, “they don’t want to come.” The translation, “They wouldn’t come.” Makes it seem like a refusal, but it’s much more apathetic than that, at least at first.

“They didn’t want to come.” They don’t care. They care about work or family or relaxing. Or they just don’t care about the banquet, not interested. “They don’t even pay attention.” Are you, right now? Who really cares what the servant has to say. We’ve heard it all before! What more do I need to know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, banquet. Ready. Come. I know I should but, well, we all know how that goes.

After apathy there appears something else. Maybe it’s with that person, or maybe it’s their children, or their children’s children, maybe to the third and fourth generation, apathy turns to anger. Tempers flair. “Why’s he keep inviting me? He should stop pestering me. Doesn’t He get the hint? I don’t want to come. I don’t want Him, I don’t want His Son, I don’t want His banquet, and I want His servants to shut up about it! So, I’ll make them stop…permanently.” Hard heads breed hard hearts, and hard hearts produce anger and hostility, even violence! (This is what you see happen with the Israelites in the Old Testament.)

Do you care about the Lord’s banquet? Sure, right now, I guess. At least you look like you do. You’re here! And there’s the banquet. I can only judge your appearances. The Lord sees much deeper than that. He sees all of you—all the way down. He sees your everyday, how His banquet rates compared to your farm or job or school or sports. The gifts of God become the masks of demons when they pull what you want, what you think, say, and do away from the Lord who calls to His wedding banquet.

We end up sacrificing for our kids, our jobs, our hobbies, or whatever else it may be in our life that puts us at odds with the King and the Son, who want us to eat the wedding feast. And just so you know, “sacrificing,” as far as what the Bible says, is what humans do to gods, even false gods, which are just demons. The way it works for your vocations, your callings as “father, mother, son, daughter, husband, wife, or worker” is this: they’re a cross they’re death. And your primary calling is “Come to the feast!”

The more estranged you are from God the Father, from Jesus, and from the work of the Holy Spirit, the more opposed you become the banquet, to the invitation, and ultimately to Him who puts on the whole shindig FOR YOU. This move can happen in our own life. One Sunday turns into two, a month of Sundays into 6, and you know how it goes. Or that estrangement can works across generations. What you do mediocre, your children do worse. For the Spirit for this not to be so! For the Lord warns, “I will punish the children for the sin of fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.”

“Hating” in the Bible has to do with priorities. It’s not emotional like we’d understand it. “To love the Lord” means He is first, everything else is secondary. If a secondary thing is put first before God, then that is tantamount to hating God. And according to Jesus’ Parable that has everything to do with coming to the wedding banquet, which, and I’ll get to this in a little bit, has everything to do with the Third Commandment.

So, it is a good thing then that the Lord’s banquet will be filled. His eternal one will be filled. “The wedding feast that has no end.” If some areas or families or individuals don’t want Him or His Son or the banquet, they won’t have it. They get destruction. They will reap the fruit their hatred, proved by their behavior and priorities. But those who against all odds actually come, they reap eternal reward. They receive all that God has done for them. They want to be at the feast prepared for them.

They are there through no fault of their own. The Lord doesn’t care if you’re good or if you’re bad. (Human categories.) Your moral resume isn’t checked. This doesn’t mean you can just cover up your sinful behavior. You can probably make yourself look good, fool me or the elders or the members here, but your life is just intentionally filled up with all sorts of grudges, selfishness, sexual immorality, drunkenness, or whatever else. You can’t do that with your heavenly Father. He sees all of you—all the way down. When you show up without Christ’s righteousness, with no real intention to be covered and renewed by it, to live only how you want, then well, you’ll reap the reward of that: “Bind him, hand and foot, and cast him into the outer darkness.” (That’s hell.) “Look carefully how you walk,” Paul says.

So, it’s a good thing the Lord prepares a banquet without consulting any of us first. It’s a good thing the Son does everything for his bride, the Church. He dies for her, sheds His blood for her sins. Her blemishes are ours, for we are members of His body, the Church. And so her cleanness is ours, for we are members of His body, the Church. Jesus died for us, and all our sins, and we have been washed clean in Baptism, forgiven our sins.

His Father prepares the banquet for you. That banquet is promise of eternal life—an eternal party at God’s table. That’s the promise of Isaiah 25:“The LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever.”

But it’s also this banquet. The Supper of Jesus’ body and blood is for you for the forgiveness of your sins. This prepares you for the feast to come. Through the forgiveness of your sins you also receive life and salvation. “This body and blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ strengthens and preserves you in both body and soul unto life everlasting.” It’s the medicine for sin and death, the promise that Christ forgives and will resurrect you on the Last Day. (Jn 6) If you’re dead set on your sins, though, don’t come you believe neither the benefits nor the power of Jesus’ body and blood. The Supper isn’t the cloak for you to keep doing your sins, but to give you real forgiveness and true life—a life of ever greater freedom from your sins, worked by Christ in you.

This is what the Third Commandment is all about. It’s about hearing His Word. “Protect the Sabbath day to make it holy.” But why? “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.” (Deut 5) The Sabbath day is the day of preaching and God’s Word, the day of forgiveness, the day of resurrection and new life, the day of the banquet—the Son’s body and blood. All to get you ready for the Sabbath, the Banquet that has no end.

The Lord’s not messing around. So, pray for the Spirit. We must not quench the Spirit. The Spirit’s Word should slay every demonic mask that would cause us to go the other way. Pray for the Spirit to rush upon you, especially you fathers and mothers, that you would fight off any demonic mask in your life that would keep you from the feast. Pray that the Spirit would energize you like David, to fight the demonic powers in your life with the Word of God, with this Word of God, “Everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast.” The Lord’s not messing around with that either. It’s the Son’s body and blood for you for the forgiveness of all your sins.

᛭ INI ᛭